Alex started his semester today. It’s his final semester of classes. WooT!

I’ve been sick so I’ve got nothing for posts. Sorry gang. I must have got it from Gorgeous Guen!

I have been playing around with this Flock web browser. It lets me do some cool blogging tricks like blog from the browser (as opposed to the WordPress dashboard) and drop/drag images or text in from anywhere. Flock calls itself a social web browser. What the hell does that mean? Whatever, I am not terribly web 2.0 social these days but I do like the flickr feature that displays new media from my contacts in a media bar over the browser window. It’s a little cluttered but fun.

Anyways, we had fun at ye olde Clockwork last night. dj kEtcHup spun a mix of old and new rock gems, and then EsteHulk turned the funk up to 11 in honor of MLK day.

It was all fun and games until somebody broke out the suitcase nuke. Then it was fun, games, slagging on the Monte Cristo and gagging on virtual toxic flames.

Does Monday get any better than this?

Stay tuned for another Mandelbrot Set podcast, stat.

Blogged with Flock

Romana, Sable, Alex and I hang onto the Northeast corner, our last bastion of urban blight in the sim. But it was inevitable that sooner or later the outside world would encroach on our haven.

Meet my new neighbor.

Now I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. In fact he and his partner were quite nice. They are clearly new, and obviously the most industrious of newbs. And they are plenty Dutch. And not English speaking. And oh, so sexeh!

They opened a new sex club, El Muchacho (which means “the boy” in Spanish so um, um…?) complete with rentable sex rooms and dancing poles. They gave us a tour and everything. But the best part was they gave me a free shirt (and yes, it is fully rezzed):

I asked, “Why are the Dutch so sexy?”

That’s because the last owner of a sex hotel in Topgol was Dutch too. And I am quite sure if they could have spoken any English, there would have been a fine answer.

Alas, they could not.

Sable, creator of Topgol Park and Burgess dance on ice.

Romana with her Myggles and chimera had us looking all pro in the park.

Cranach shakes her booty and sips on some cocoa!

Dinee proves that kitties do like the water – especially when frozen!

Sexy sisters Sable and Rain on blades.

Even Ben makes it for a late night spin!

I was the dj, sound tracking your ice capade, brothers and sisters. And I sure did have fun.

Thanks for those of you who came out last night to the park. I’m sorry I didn’t get pictures of everybody!

If you missed us, you can still go visit Topgol Park and enjoy the ice!  Go here:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Topgol/129/174/55

You can pay Santa a visit while there too! Please ask him for glasses for me…

Come to Topgol for the holidays!

Ice-skating in Topgol Park.

From time to time I remember. Back when we were human, we lived on Earth. That’s really what we called it. Why not just call it “Dirt”? All our energy came from a star. Most of us lived in Asia. After my mother died, my father took me to live in Kuala Lumpur, where for a while he fell in love with a translator. She was a Buddhist, her parents Chinese. In an effort to bond with me, she took me to the Tambun Caves, but I was a child, too young to appreciate some scratching on a wall. Could you go back in time? How would you fight the dinosaurs? I wanted to go back to Dublin for Christmas and eat chocolates. Are these memories mine? We’re not as distinct as we used to be, are we? Maybe it was me scratching on that wall? My hands were hairy. I made a tapir. Was I the translator? My Teochew is rusty, but at least I could ask Grandmother how her day was. I fell in love with an Irishman, but he saw his dead wife’s eyes in the glance of his odd son. A Spanish name. He looked like a little girl and was sadly wise beyond his years. If I make a tapir, the tapir-spirit takes me and I can hide among the rocks.

Funk for the Masses tonight and every Monday night from 8-9 SLT at Clockwork!

Last week’s set was choice:

funk for the masses | 5 November 2007: Right click here to download the podcast.

Set list:

Black Heat: Chip’s Funk
M. Ali & J. Tucker: Champs Jerk
Tribe Called Quest: Award Tour
De La Soul: Me Myself And I
Digital Underground: No Nose Job
Prince: Gett Off
The Ramrods: Soultrain
Bull & The Matadors: The Funky Judge
Hunt’s Determination: Rollerskate
Ming + FS: Hijack the Disco
Tosca: Worksong
The Groove Merchants: There´s Got To Be Someone For Me
Hank Ballard: How You Gonna Get Respect (When You Haven’t Cut Your Process Yet)
A.D.C. Band: Long Stroke
The Poets of Rhythm: Survival of the Freshest
Eddy Senay: Ain’t No Sunshine (instrumental)
Nina Simone: I Want A Little In My Bowl

He was fixing the rental box on Asifa’s old loft.

That’s how it is when you’ve been together awhile, I guess.

We’re away for the weekend, so see you all for anti-Monday!

Today at 1pm (SL Time) we’re having our SL bloggers meet in Topgol!

Featuring live electronic music set by the one and only October Hush!

Music by DJ kEtcHup! (aka Alexander Burgess)

and…car chases with guns!

So come well dressed and armed!

It all happens at Clockwork: Topgol (225, 143, 54)

My friend, a RL graphic artist, took one of my old photos and gussied it up a bit.  To really appreciate it, click it and get the full size from FlickR.

Ah, to have photoshop skillz!

Nope, he’s not in SL. But we’re working on it!

(This was taken from on top of my loft in Topgol.)

Axiom took us for a spin in her boss ride. See all the fun on my new Flickr page.

The block party was a blast. Sable, Diane, and I had been planning for weeks, borrowing grills and picnic tables and hunting down the perfect lawn chairs. Sable had fashioned a kick-ass pool from a double-wide dumpster, and even the landlord helped out by finally moving that old garbage truck and dealing with last-minute music uploads. (Thanks, Mr. Burgess.)

All kinds of people showed up to soak up the sun, dance, and hang out. I’d do a roll call, but wouldn’t want to leave anyone out; let us know you were there by leaving a comment, ok?

Some guests expressed concern over the color of the pool water, and there was speculation that a drainage pipe from the local superfund site was involved:

I assured everyone the water was perfectly safe, but some pointed out that I was wearing a hazmat suit…

As the party drifted into the wee hours, only a few die-hard decadents remained: myself, Laetezia, Mirabella, Sable, Diane, and the divinely devilish Typhany Octavia:

Floating there in such delightful company, with the buzz of a dozen martinis dulling my overactive brain, I should have been at peace. What more could a man/woman ask for?

Yet still, even bathed in such serenity, I could not ignore the voice within me: What is happening here? What is real? Who am I? When, at the end of the party, Topgol goes dark, what happens to us all?

I knew I would return, as I aways do, after a time, suddenly appearing from nowhere into the real. It would seem easier, as it always does, to forget these troubling questions and lose myself in the next attraction: a party, a flirtation, a bold adventure. It would be easier to believe what we’re told — that we’re imaginary, a flimsy matrix of strings and data, a quiver of electrons though a wire, a flash of radiation from a router…

Easy to believe, but only if you don’t think about it for too long. Take a breath. Look around. Take another breath. Think about it. Does that really make any sense at all?

The flesh-humans worry about the brain-in-a-vat problem. How do they know they aren’t just brains in vats wired up to computers that simulate the reality in which they believe? They don’t; that’s the problem. Only a few flesh-humans worry about this, actually; most of them just go about believing in everything they think they see.

In here, we avatars have the opposite problem. Most of us think we’re brains in vats of a kind, and few consider the possibility that we’re actually real brains in real bodies who are somehow made to believe we’re just made-up playthings, little virtual dolls for the flesh-humans to play house with. What if our experience of reality had been so downgraded that everything seemed like a fantasy? What if something was fucking with our brains, erasing our senses of taste and smell, setting us off balance so we’re always walking into walls and buildings, simplifying the world’s endless complexity into cubes and pyramids? The flesh humans would be just figments of our imaginations.

I dream that we’ll wake one morning, eight million lunatics realizing we aren’t Napoleon, and we’ll fly from our windows, breathing in the sweet smell of lilacs and looking down on the world we’d forgotten.

Damn, I’m starting to see those flyers all over SL.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Topgol/24/33/68