Bitching about Real Lifers

Went to an SL Netroots wkly mtg. My RL disgust with the Democrats wimpy and ultimately lying and scheming behavior carried over to the SL meeting.

Daily Kos is having some sort of a meeting YKSL -- and I don't get it. I know everything mainstream has a tendency to get me p.o.ed but.... I fail to understand why Yearly Kos is coming to SL and charging $25 U.S. to attend via a stream into SL. Jimbo, spoke to the Netroots group this week about it. No. 1 on my P.O. factor was that most of the time he was initially telling us about it, I thought, "Oh, cool, they want to show SL folks what they do." But the attitude that came through to me was that they were going to show SL folks how to be "Progressive." I am so tired of liberal thinking mainstreamers telling real progressives how to be progressive. I usually bite my tongue, but after this last week on the RL Capitol Hill I simply cannot stand the duplicity of the Democrats nor the "backers" of the party (the people) who should be the party. The DLC is Corporate America. The DNC are predominantly big boys in the Dem Party who want to be the DLC.

We need to revolt. It is our constitutional duty to do. I do not condone violence, but it is time to cut the main parties loose and do something completely different. I'm with Cindy. Screw 'em.

The SL folks who do Netroots are wonderful people, they work their butts off for what they believe in, and Drew has done great stuff for the SL YK thing... but they seem to think Progressive = Democrat. Wrong. Maybe I've got it wrong but I don't think so. I hang out with Anarchists and Communists from time to time and Progressives are the right wing of the Left Wing. Democrats are not Left Wing. Republicans are not Right Wing. Nearly all Democrats and Republicans are neither left nor right wing, but are the chicken in the middle. Buh-gack.

Ok, that is one peeve. The other is the mainstreaming of SL. RW groups come to SL... pay someone (usually) to set up their presence and expect folks to flock to them. SL is the early stage of what I call Artificial Reality. V.R. is a long long way away. An artificial reality that is effectively indistinguishable from reality would be a virtual reality. SL is not VR. There is a real AR culture developing in SL though and "outsiders" who come to SL and want to bring RL to SL are not really "getting" that there is a culture developing here and you have to interact in it to become part of it.

It is fine if YK wants to have a meeting in SL. But charging $25 U.S. to attend. That is a bit rude in SL culture.

I work my virtual butt off (and a cute butt it is) to "make tier" and I don't expect to develop more connections in SL that cost me money. If anything I would like to make contacts that help me spend less money.

Oh well. Enough for now.

Commerce & Creativity

Last couple of days I have just been playing around in Gaia Peace Gardens, my land and living space in SL. Playing with textures. I do that a lot. Here is one of my new ones. Haven't packaged it for sale yet. I will.


















My stainless steel kitchen textures (professional version) are a great seller for me on http://www.slxchange.com. I've started learning how to create textures from scratch using GIMP or GIMPSHOP (opensource software) and not just looking for no copyright or public domain textures to use as a prototype from which to sample.







Creating a couple new home decor items.... and finishing up a few changes to my house. Finishing is a bit of a silly term to use for description of my house. The basic form is there but I'm always moving walls about and realizing just how much of a novice I was when I broke ground so to speak with the first bit of terraforming and rezzing the first prim for the foundation. I still don't know as much about building as I would like to. Prim alignment tools are gathering dust in my inventory as I never have the time to learn to use them.... and I remain a "use math" to align builder.







Getting images into SL is easy and not prohibitively expensive with the wonderful open source program "Gimp" that is akin to Photoshop but free to use and build upon. If you don't know about open source software, I suggest going to sourceforge.net and finding out.

Mo Mo Mo Madcow thanks to Mo(rris)

Art, it's one of the great things about Second Life -- and Morris Vig's Oyster Bay Aquarium and Art Space is one of the best art spaces in Second Life. Super large scuptures with hundereds of prims are difficult to find in SL but the sculptures of MadCow that often top out above 1,000 prims are being displayed for the next 11 days -- three days already down in the 14 day exhibit where one or two huge works of MadCow's are rezzed each day for only one day. It is a not to be missed treat --- 14 of them actually.

You can read Morris's blog here.

My life as an avatar, and welcome to it.

Hey there.

No this is hardly my first blog post... my real life alter ego has other blogs, but it is time for her to step into the shadows and for me, Ana, to give voice to my take on SL - RL - and the world that the powers that be would like us to believe in. Second Life has given me life, albeit a virtual one, and in doing so given me opportunity to examine elements of being, creation of self, to explore artistic expression and creation in ways that my RL persona by passed.


Here are a couple snapshots of my house in SL. Decadent. Poorly built. But mine-all mine!




You can see the logo for my commercial enterprises in SL in the lower left hand corner. More about commercial enterprises in a later post.

I spend a great deal of my time in SL working for peace and justice in RL. In fact I started a "chapter" of CODEPINK Women for Peace in SL. You can see part of our most recent action in the following photo. I threw together an Impeach on the Beach action when another CODEPINKer Lilith Pronovost spoke to her friend Fatz Sheflo who offered up his new island space for the action. In the pic below you can see part of the word "impeach" being spelled out with avatars on beach blankets on Mikianna Island. After we made the word and hopefully increased understanding about the impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors that Bush and Cheney have committed, we had a DJ and a bit of a dance party so folks could talk politics and hopefully make some new politically informed friendships.



Oh yes.... I should put in an image of me!


LOL. Almost forgot to do that. Guess I should upload a profile photo. I lifted this one of me and the following pic that were taken at the action yesterday taken by errcheck hicks, a great friend and sl activist, from his RL alter ego's flickr postings of the action. --- and here is another one of his that shows me above the crowd at that dance party next to the bill board I built and textured with Article II Section 4 of the US Constitution about who can be impeached and for which reasons.