M is for Myg

Well I thought I’d never see the day - not again - where my two old pals Romana Wei and Johnny Skosh would be in the same sim at the same time. But here’s proof. Romana is one of the original founders of the Topgol Philadelphia community and Johnny is one of the original Section 8 tenants. In January 2007 when I wandered into Topgol, Johnny was the first person I met. He looked like Robert Smith so I rented the place next door. That started our Topgol experience way in the back when.

Things changed - they always do in SL.  Romana started spending less and less time online. Johnny started spending more time online. He actually built his own empire and created the very swank up and coming Dead City (an undead themed retail and general hang-out sim).

There’s some fucking comment I wanted to make here about how time passes in SL and what that means to friendship or some shit like that, but I’m spent because I was sucked into SL until 3:45am and then woken up by my adorable labrador retriever at 8am for a rousing game of tug the slipper.

I was somewhat inspired to post today by the news that a good SL friend of mine had suddenly decided to log off indefinitely, saying something to the effect (I didn’t talk to her) that she had put too much of herself into SL and her RL was suffering, her friends were bitching that she’d changed. And I know exactly how that feels, to be honest.  It’s a bit tricky to draw the line between the two worlds sometimes as the Second has it’s very own reality. It’s literally like balancing two lives sometimes.

So to my friend - be well and enjoy the fresh autumn breezes. Take long walks and drink steaming mugs of whatever.  Know that you’ll be missed but that even so, you’re understood.

“You just gotta see this cute camper!” said Myg as she threw the snapshot on my desk in the Pwnshop. “Can we get one? Huh? Can we?”

My first reaction was no. Absolutely not. (Myg often calls me Mr. No Not.) I’ve got way too much to do here in Mainline (SLURL)–the club has to get finished by the end of the month, and the only thing that’s been done on the new municipal complex is the basement. The crew finished pouring the concrete and planked over the top of the hole and went on extended break. For a week. The foreman claims it’s due to shipping delays on Italian marble.

“Italian marble? Who the hell ordered that?” I yelled.

“You did, sir.”

I don’t remember Italian marble… Pauly! That old man is going to turn my agita into angina into an aneurysm. See how stressed out I am? Between the construction delays and all this business with Myg and the vampires, I haven’t slept well in more than a month. Suddenly a getaway, just the two of us, in a little camper seemed perfect. Memorial Day in Philly can be like taking a foot-long and… well, never mind.

“Okay doll, let me go check it out, first, and then maybe we can go this weekend.”

So I tp’d over to Tableau (Tableau (198, 179, 17)) and like Myg says in her Flickr caption for the camper snapshot: “Wanna know what I love most about SL? People who build stuff like this.”

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Nothing lasts forever.

Especially in Second Life. Read more

“Dough? Car?” I thought to myself as Allotta’s drunken whispers rattled in my ear. What the hell was this guy off about?

Just then a man and a woman walked into the bar. The man sat at a little table and started to play Rock Paper Scissors with himself. The woman sat on the bar stool next to Allotta. He loosened his grip on my midsection, so I hopped behind the bar and started to polish bottles, thinking I’d stall for time and try to find a convenient exit point. “What are we drinking, folks?”

The gal started jibbering in Korean to Allotta, who started jabbering back. They knew each other–he’d called for back up! My gut told me they had it in for me. But why?

I poured some booze into a glass and handed it to her with a wry, wan little smile. She returned the favor with an icy look and kept yammering on in whatever hieroglyphic symbols I couldn’t understand. While Allotta was distracted by her prattle I poured another and handed it to him, dumping it in his lap at the last second. As he started cursing me in 7 different languages, and she started to unpack what looked like a nice little handgun, I hurled the espresso machine across the bar between the two of them and ran for the exit.

Once outside I ducked into a public toilet and frantically scanned my inventory and friends list. Wiped clean again! My memory still fuzzy, I opened the search window and tried to think of the name of my home…topgas…torvgol…toglepac…then a snippet came to mind. Wawa. I searched Wawa and hit the button.

Schhhhhhhhhht0ink!

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..::Met a Stranger Navigation::..
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“Myg, we’re really worried about you.” Romana insisted.

I didn’t want to listen, but she was so damned earnest that it was pretty hard to blow her off.

I’d only been back from Paris 1900 (SLURL) a couple of days when they started in on me: “We had no idea where you were for days, you didn’t answer any IMs, you could have died, what’s with that whole sock monkey dancing dream, etc., etc., etc.” Same old, same old. But they had a reason to be worried. Read more

You’ve had the dream, right? You dream that you wake up, but then find yourself falling endlessly into a terrifying abyss. Now then, imagine yourself dreaming something completely stupid, like dancing the hokey pokey with a sock monkey in Ibiza, but then waking up to this shit:

I was screaming, screaming like you’d scream if you saw death approaching as fast and as hard as a concrete slab flying toward your face at 120 k an hour. I would have wondered how in the hell I’d gotten there but there was no time. I was seriously about to bite it. Read more

Continued from Small crimes - met a stranger part III To read this series from the beginning, start with Met a stranger on a train. When you’re done with that, read Bodegaddiction. Then read Small crimes. Then come back here.
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The last thing I can remember seeing was that cash register at the Bodega. Then it all went blank.

I don’t know how long I was out of it. Hours? Days? It felt like a lifetime as the heavy stupor rolled off me like recovery from a near death experience. My head pounded like a bulldozer on broken concrete and I stunk so bad I made myself gag…twice.

My clothes? Gone. I was down to my boxers, but somehow wound up in someone else’s smelly socks and ripped up shirt. My money? Stolen, I guess. I was penniless, not even able to buy a demo hair. My inventory? Fucking wiped. Read more

“Join me in Sonogno” was all the eerie message said.

It was from him.

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