Burning Life 2009

As previously noted, I tend to avoid big Linden-run Grid-wide celebrations, on the theory that they are likely to be laggy and disappointing. Two years ago I helped out slightly at the VAA build in Burning Life 2007. Last year I apparently completely ignored Burning Life 2008.

But this year, maybe because I have a fast lag-busting machine, or because so many of my friends have builds, or whatever, I’ve been paying more attention to Burning Life, and have a few million pictures of it, a random subset of which I’ve saved to disk and uploaded to flickr. (See Chestnut Rau’s NWN posting for pointers to the Official BL Info stuffs.)

Here I am riding a unicycle beneath a couple of fire-juggling Stilt Bitches. (A camp based on one at the RL Burning Man.)

The Steel Racoonfish circling my head is from some earlier fishing. :)

Here I have found my own fire-sticks to juggle, and monocycled up to the top of a spiral ramp in a build adjacent to the Stilt Bitches.

Shortly after taking that picture, I fell scenically (is that a word?) to the gritty ground.

I love this next picture. Somewhere after the Stilt Bitches, I think while hanging around with Ava an’ Corwin, I changed shape and clothes, and then I went off and visited Sabrinaa Nightfire’s Peace and Love Oasis. She has a lovely area where you take a danceball and go swimming through a series of translucent hearts (and I did one of the scripts that powers it!).

The fish is a nice subtle touch in that shot, eh? :)

Somewhere in here friend Michele joined me and we went exploring about at random.

We’re somewhere down there, dancing around in your typical “dance club set in the clouds above a grungy urban vacant lot”. Very SL. :)

And here we are in another typical BL09 performance area, set on a giant’s table among the food:

(Somewhere in there I turned my hair bright green and added some glow. Note to Blue Mars: any virtual world in which I can’t do that kind of thing on a whim is just not in the running.)

With my draw distance turned up a bit, looking out over some of the odd and intriguing things scattered around the playa:

The camp to the right there is ArtCrash Exonar’s; great spikey sculptures. The one to the upper left I don’t think I ever got to. So much to see!

AM Radio’s camp is small but amazing. Not only can you get an on-fire version of AM’s classic bundle-of-sticks attachment (and a free wheatfield!), but you can also draw graffiti on the side of a train!

I drew that silly face there. :)

(I’m not completely sure how that works, but my drawing is also on flickr, whence one might find some clues as to the mechanism.)

This next picture, at Veronique Wellesley’s “Dream of Water in the Desert”, is out of sequence; I think it actually comes just after my visit to Sabrinaa’s camp. Or something.

Anyway, it’s lovely and soothing, a cool blue oasis in the desert, with original poetry and lots of running water.

(Rezago Kokorin has a nice oceanic build also, that I don’t seem to have downloaded any of my pictures of. I should!)

And then I took about a billion pictures at Poid Mahovlich’s “Cabaret of Flame” camp. I’ll only burden you with a few of them here :) but it was a lovely build, a great crowd, and a really fun time.

(That’s Michele to my right bein’ a scantily-clad fire worshipper. And the sky is, I think “[TOR] Commie Sky” from the Sky Settings Editor Thingie.)

Different part of the same camp, with a different sky preset, and draw distance set high enough to show another camp sizzling in the middle distance:

The central tower of the camp, seen from above in natural playa-light.

Really gorgeous! I’m always amazed by what visual types can do in SL.

And finally (for now), the camp’s dance area, natural light set to midnight:

I am just visible in center left due to my green glowing hair. :)