Happy New Year 2023

 

remain seated

I'm fascinated by signs in Second Life. They turn up all over the place, sometimes in unlikely places, often telling you the obvious, and like this one, “Remain Seated”, which I would have thought you’re more likely to see on the train itself rather than where I found it, beside the railway tracks.

Where are you supposed to sit? On the tracks? On the sleeper or the rail? And would that really be a good idea, being that when the train comes, well, splat! How frequent are the trains on this track anyway? You could sit there waiting but then you might be waiting hours, or even days, weeks. It would be like inworld camping without the remuneration at the end.

If you were on the train and weren’t looking out of the window at the time of passing the sign then how would you know to remain seated? You’d have to rely on the driver or conductor giving a customer message over the intercom. I wouldn’t hold out for that though, as of all the trains I been on in SL, and I’ve been on a few, I’ve never heard anyone say anything, not even to remain seated, or even “tickets please!”, which would be awkward if they did because I never have a ticket, which means they’d probably throw me off the train while it was moving, whether I was seated or not. Ouch!

They’d think I was a hobo. I wonder where the word comes from, ‘hobo’. I checked and found all kinds of theories, but no one really knows for certain. One idea is it being short for “homeward bound” which sounds sort of plausible but I’m not totally convinced. Other ideas are even flakier. Mine is that it’s come from something like ‘homeless bohemian’, as in someone who lives kind of outside normal society by maybe choosing to have to no home. I’m not sure if this is a new idea or not, but I did come up with on my own.

Anyway, I’m not one, a hobo, so it really doesn’t matter. But I will keep chasing signs for the more intriguing and mysterious ones.

 

hello Halloween

 

‘Tis that time of year
again, be a-feared
quiver and quake
shiver and shake
the veil between
the seen and unseen
is tearing again
into tatters and shreds
as one world is bled
and seeps into the other
to claim the unclaimed
souls without names
the walking undead,
despairing, the dread,
breathless the screams
unravel from dreams
severed the veins
that trickle, that stain
there’ll be no escape
from this your wake
now all you can do
is wait.

 

fallen for autumn

I’m coming out of the cupboard because autumn is here, my favourite time of the year, definitely my favourite season.

I can’t say I am missing those baking hot days of summer, being of vampire skin, i.e. burns easily, I for one am pleased we’ve lost more than a few degrees as autumn, or Fall, depending on your preference, seeps into our days and our bones. Yes, it’s chilly, yes it’s a bit damp, yes it’s a bit more breezy and yes, possibly a bit more rain but not actually worse than summer rain as when we had it just made for flooding. So I welcome autumn with open arms as I always do.

And SL is all over autumn too, well, mostly. Or perhaps just where I visit as if you’re in the southern hemisphere then I know it’s not autumn for you but the beginnings of spring. Isn’t that just weird, you think, being on the same planet and yet here we are having not just different seasons but polar opposite ones. But I guess that’s what the poles are there for, to be poles apart. So now, as in RL I seek out Autumn in SL where also the colours are just so vivid and alive, even though technically they symbolize a slowing down, even death, as leaves change colour and drop to the ground to dry shrivel and decay, or get squirrelled, or wormed, away by worms underground, as that’s what worms do. Although I have to see if that’s also true in SL: do worms sneak leaves underground?

In fact, is there even an underground in any real sense in SL? We talk all the time about the ‘sea’ or the gap between sims where nothing exists, the Void Ocean, as it’s called, but rarely do we think about what’s under our feet. A bit like RL really, few ever wonder about what they’re walking on and what goes on down there which is just as much or even probably far more than what goes on above ground. An entire world out of sight and out of mind.

Anyway, here are some photos of my SL autumn travels. I hope to post more over the season, at least before winter gets a fingerhold.

~x Anan 

 

 

 

to sit or not to sit

 

Oh my word! I haven’t posted anything for ages, I just noticed. Much apologies to the very few readers I actually have, I’ve been busy, and with heatwaves on top of work, studies, health, other stuff I just completely didn’t realise what time had gone by. So, here is one about sitting. I do like sitting.

I spend a lot of time sitting inworld. In fact, I have loads of sitting selfies here, there and everywhere I go in SL, as some of my postings here already show. One could say I might be preoccupied, or obsessed, with sitting, but I’m not, honestly. It’s an occupation in itself though in SL, or a hobby, or an addiction; oh look, a seat, sit!

I’ve noticed it’s a habit of mine to try out as many different choices of sitting as possible. As someone’s gone to the trouble of providing sitting opportunities it would be churlish not to at least try them out. Even though it takes no effort at all to stand in SL, it always makes sense to me to sit, as I would likely do in RL, especially if I’m going to be somewhere any length of time. It’s kind of rude not to, I am a guest in these places/sims after all. It would be like going to someone’s house and not taking off your coat.

So many people log in and just stand around, often pointlessly, often never even moving, just standing letting the AO, animation overrider, do the work, even when there are maybe dozens of perching places.

I also do meditation inworld, usually sitting on mats or cushions, and sometimes I’ll do some yoga with my specially-designed yoga mat or on one provided where I happen to be. Despite it being virtual yoga, it can also be surprisingly relaxing; weird, I know.

SL is a funny old world, not just because of the weird and wonderful things you come across in it, but also how people behave. It can be fascinating for people-watching, or avi-watching, even watching those standing around doing nothing, sometimes.

One of the weirdest funny old world things I come across inworld is toilets. Despite being seats, I’m never tempted to sit on them and do wonder why anyone even bothers including them in their builds or designs. If anything is redundant in SL, it’s a toilet, it’s got to be pretty much the most redundant thing in SL compared to how much it’s needed in RL.

Well, that’s a strange place to end a blog on, toilets. Perhaps I’ll have something more interesting to write about next time, but I can’t promise anything being that I’m not massively active there at the moment, RL being what it is. Chat again soon and hope you enjoyed this little read, despite the toilet-talk.  

© Anan Eebus ~x

a place of my own– nekopolis tails

I joined Second Life (SL) in February 2008, and wow, that was so long ago in a world so different from what it is now. I’m not sure what the age-limit is for SL but by US standards I might have not been old enough but as I am in the UK, I was and still am most definitely an adult here.

For the first year I didn’t have anywhere of my own to live, as such, I’d never thought about it until I saw that people did have homes of different kinds. Once I’d become a vampire I made my ‘home’ the land of whatever clan I was in, but it wasn’t ever anywhere I could call my own private space.

Then, while on my random travels I discovered a sim called Nekopolis, and while there met someone who is even to this day still on my friends list told me about a block of apartments with rooms to rent for 1L a week for 10 prims. I thought, brilliant! Until I remembered I had absolutely zero money/lindens. I’d even become part neko at the time, I had a very cool blue-shaded tail.

So, I took up a combination of camping, which was boring and didn’t do for long, and hunting out places where magic chairs or lotteries, whatever, were giving away lindens if the first letter of your first name landed just right. This got me 1L here and 1L there but it was incredibly laborious and tedious. That’s how it came about I started pole-dancing for money.

I went around the various pole-dancing clubs and places, like beaches and bars and anywhere really that had a tip jar you could freely log in to and just go for it. But then it also had to be somewhere for people otherwise I wouldn’t have earned many tips with no one there.

Now this was a lucrative occupation, at least for a while anyway, and fun, again, at least for a while. What I hadn’t realised was how exhausting it could be, and a steep learning curve though I did take to it quite well, I thought. I was earning sometimes hundreds for an hour or two’s work.

It was mad, but I worked hard for it, it’s not as easy as it looks even though some dancers just seemed to get on the pole and let the anims (pre-programmed animations) take over, like it was they weren’t there in RL. I didn’t do that, I was present all the time and interacting with any audience and happily chatted with customers, some of who were really nice and not all creeps as one might imagine in these places, and respectful too. Some places though did have so-called bouncers who ejected anyone rude. Pole-dancing doesn’t have to be seedy, even though I did do partial striptease with it down to lingerie for a while until I was brave enough to go topless, but only for the right tips and if it felt right. I never went total nude though, had to leave something to the imagination, surely.

Consequently, I was now earning plenty of L’s to get one of those single-room apartments in Nekopolis, finally, all I had to do was go there every day and keep an eye out for one to come free. Lo and behold, after a few weeks one did and I got it and moved into my first own place where at least I could rezz some seating and a pose stand, which pretty much took up all the ten prims. But that was all I needed. I loved the novelty of it and I set home there for a handy low-lag place to log in.

I stayed there for ages, more than a year, which in SL is a long time. The only reason I left was that, sadly, the sim closed down, as so many do. Such is the nature of place. It was a shame and I do miss it because apart from it being inexpensive to live here, it was just a cool place with plenty of hangouts, and shops! Who knows, if it was still there now I might also still be living there.

As for the pole-dancing, I carried on for several months, adding chair-dancing among other related things to my CV, including some perhaps less respectable skills. In time I moved on from the pole work into other stuff inworld. To this day it is still the best earning job I’ve ever had. 

 © Anan Eebus