Lt. John “Pepper” Pike

We interrupt the combat-scripting exercises :) for this important bulletin. This must-have item is now available in the Marketplace, apparently for the very affordable price of 0 (zero) Lindenbucks:

(If anyone doesn’t know the story of “Pepper” Pike and his elevation to memehood, see for instance this HuffPo piece.)

I saw this by the side of the road and knew I had to have one. :) Not being swift enough to look in that there new-fangled Marketplace for it, I left an IM for the creator, who very kindly not only gave me a copy, but pointed me to the Marketplace link.

So spread the word! Defend SL against dissent and nonviolent protest! Or even just annoying weeds!

What I Would Do With My Sim

Well, it’s still Wednesday somewhere! :)

Yesterday’s (Tuesday’s) BBBC suggested topic was:

You’ve been given a sim of your very own to use for free for one year. However, there are 3 rules. It cannot be residential, it cannot be commercial, and it has to be open to the public. What do you do with it?

And I kind of like that, so even thought it’s Wednesday or perhaps Thursday I’ll use it.

I think I’d spend the first month just playing around with all those prims, and with a sim that I could disrupt and lag and crash without bothering anyone, having a good time and making replicators and self-rezzing objects and so on. Maybe the first two months. :) Using it as a personal sandbox, that is, although of course open to the public (that being the terms of the lease). They can come and watch me do weird things.

Then I think I’d divide it into nine sections (three by three), reserve the middle one for myself, and find eight creative friends (who maybe don’t have sims of their own) and offer them the chance to do whatever they want for the rest of the year on their part of my sim. I’d make them the owner, and give them full rights to do stuff (never having owned an estate I’m not sure exactly what this means, but I would figure it out and do it).

And then I’d hang around fiddling with my own 1/9 region, watching what my friends were doing on theirs, maybe calling for informal parties, having fireworks shows, and so on, for the next happy nine or ten or eleven months.

It would be great!

What would you do with yours?

How long, and how rich?

So the first question in the Big Bad Blogger Challenge is: “How long have you been a blogger? How has it enriched your life?”.

For some reason I shudder at the words “blog” and “blogger”. :) But I’ve been writing a weblog since October 1999 (woot!), or perhaps since August 1999 (depending on how you count the rather weblog-like “news” page on my personal domain). On September 17th, 1999, I presciently wrote:

I think everyone in the world should be forced to write a paragraph a day of thoughts, events, rants, or whatever, and to put it up on the Web for everyone to read. Of course that would imply universal literacy and computer access, but that’s OK! Anyone who refused to post their daily paragraph could like have their livers eaten by eagles or something.

thus personally kicking off the entire Personal Publishing Revolution single-handed.

On the other hand, I started weblogging here on June 20th, 2008.

Hey, so I’m coming up on my tenth year of weblogging in general, and my first year of SL weblogging. What fun!

How has it enriched my life?

I’ve always loved writing, loved speaking in the textual voice; and similarly (I freely admit) loved reading my own words, listening to my own voice. In general I don’t speak in voice-voice nearly as much or as comfortably; I’m not that fond of the sound of my voice, and I speak kinda fast (not to mention I say weird things) so people often don’t hear and/or don’t understand what I’ve just said in voice. In print, they will at least see the right words, and they can reread them a few times if they seemed too nonsensical the first time. Not that that always helped. :)

Writing stuff in general has wildly enriched my life, I’d say, in ways and reasons that I can’t lay out in obvious milestones or promotions or new family members or titles of nobility. I’ve made friends, of that mysterious delicious textual sort of friend that one makes through letters, through words, through text. I’ve recorded bits of my life and later gone back and read them again, to great advantage in memory and placidity and general happiness. I’ve had nice validating comments from various people (you read what I wrote! you considered it significant enough to react to! maybe you even liked it!). And in general I think writing to the world, and hearing back from interesting parts of the world (I have the best readers) has kept me sane (more or less) and enriched my life marvelously.

Also I get to post pictures of myself! :)

Bottoms!

On the beach at Extropia.

From a meme by this guy, via Chestnut. (Whose bottom is really cute. :) )

I really do need to write that “Body:RL :: Avatar:SL” posting sometime…