And Now For Something Completely Different...

A small break from everything you wanted to know about sex and the single Second Life girl...

You either love British humor, or you don't. Be forewarned, if you don't like British humor, don't read this post, go here instead, you'll be much happier.

From the daily mash, a site that makes The Onion look like it was written by boring 4-year olds, comes the following artitle:

'LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THIS FUCKING RAT' SAY ZOOLOGISTS

A TOTALLY humongous rat has been discovered in a really remote part of New Guinea by some freaked-out zoologists.

A team of scientists from Conservation International spotted the absolutely mental thing while up to their knees in all kinds of crap in the Foja mountains.

Expedition leader Professor Wayne Hayes said: "I was filling my water bottle when I saw this huge fucking thing and I shouted to my mate Dave, I said, 'Dave, look at the size of that fucker!' and Dave was like, 'Jesus Christ, it's a fucking monster!

...

Professor Hayes added: "Ben was like, 'that's a rat, it's totally a rat' and I was going, 'naah, it's some kind of freaky beaver or a weird-looking, fucked-up cat.'"

Dr David Hobbs added: "I was like, 'that's a mutant otter or something, it's bigger than my dog, for Christ's sake' and Wayne was saying we should catch it, and I was like, 'you fucking catch it'.

"So anyway, we tell Stevie that it's his turn to catch something and he's like totally pissed off, but he tears after it anyway, shouting, 'come here you dirty big bastard, I want to take your picture'."

Dr Steven McKay added: "We also trapped this manky little thing with huge eyes which they reckon is maybe a possum or a really big gerbil.

I know, this isn't the most erudite humor around, but it tickles my funny bone for a couple of reasons. I used to watch nature shows on PBS when I was growing up and the thought of Sir David Attenborough creeping through the jungles in the Foja mountains, parting the leaves of some big plant, turning to the camera, and saying in hushed tones, "Ahh, the elusive Big Fucking Rat, a rare sight indeed." That image makes me giggle uncontrollably, the people around me on the bus must think I'm insane.

I also vaguely remember a few "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" episodes from when I was really little and I remember the host, Marlin Perkins, would be talking all about how deadly some creature was and then he'd turn to Jim Fowler and say something like, "Even though the much feared man-eating Bengal tiger can rend a man limb from limb in seconds, Jim here is going to go up to it, pull on its tail so you can hear it roar, a roar that sends chills to the hearts of man. Then, he will put his head in its mouth so you can see the teeth that can crush a man's skull in an instant." Poor Jim would then dutifully go and perform whatever insane stunt Marlin would assign him. I often wondered why Marlin hated Jim so much.

If he survived, I can just hear someone saying to him, "Lucky."

Well, to reward everyone who read through this entire post of my prattling, I will give the first one who answers the following question correctly with a long kiss and a quick fondle in the back of a dark theatre.

From my one of my favorite pieces by the same authors who brought you the title of this post, who would turn and say "Lucky" to Jim if he survived the insane instructions Marlin gave him? It's a bit obscure, but it never fails to make me laugh because of the absurdity of the situation. If no one gets it, I'll eventually tell you, but then, no cookie for you.

This Is Either Bad Or Good

Cory Lindon is leaving Linden Lab, in his own words, it appears to be over creative differences. Some people think this is a bad thing, that he is the guy that "made it work". I love the following quote from Cory:

Creating a programming language that now had 2.5 billion lines of code written in it – note to self, next time spend more than one night designing language.

That brings back memories of bad architectural decisions in my life as well.

Now, I'm going to preface all of the following, with, I haven't met Cory, have any inside information about this in anyway, or have any personal axes to grind.

I think this could be a very good thing. Send any flames my way you want, but I don't believe anyone's perfect.

Cory built a platform that I've dedicated lot's of time to and certainly a fair amount of money. Anything I spend that much time with, I have an opinion on. He made this crazy concept a working system. It has many flaws that are keeping it from being truly great and continuing the breakneck growth it showed earlier.

There are crashes, bugs, outages, inventory loss,and numerous other things that mar the Second Life experience. Cory could be a very good software engineer, very creative, very innovative, but he may not make a good CTO. The skills that are good at starting a project and getting it to the "first stage" are not the skills that get you to the "next stage." They are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same.

Unlike others, I like that Cory made the client open source. I like that he supported libsecondlife. I drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago about open source and how fundamentally right it is.

All of that does not make him good at managing the architecture of a system, to stabilize it, to hunker down and do the boring things that need to be done on the platform. Some people are comparing him to Wozniak and drawing similarities to what happened at Apple. I think Wozniak leaving was ultimately good for Apple.

I read an excerpt from Michael Dell's book in which he talked about having to ask for the resignations of many of his close friends that helped him build Dell once the company grew really big. His comments went something like, "It was incredibly hard to do, they were good $100 million dollar managers, but they weren't $1 billion dollar managers." The skill set for running organizations and making them work at different sizes and different scales changes. Some can continue to reinvent themselves and change, others cannot or will not.

In the end Linden Lab is a business and businesses that grow and are pushing to grow big will go through certain stages. We've hit the "boring corporate retrenchment" stage. I just hope that Cory isn't replaced by someone from the "big corporate" stage, who doesn't know how to shepherd a growing company through the middle phases.

I Might As Well Tell You Eight Random Facts

I guess after receiving numerous tags (You know who you are), I will succumb to peer pressure...

Rules:
* Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
* People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
* At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
* Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1) Unlike my normal charming and ebullient self, right now, I can't think of anything witty to say.
2-8) See #1, only with different polysyllabic words substituted to increase my blog's reading level.

If you really want random facts about me, re-read the Mistress Strangelove series.

Besides, all of the good facts were taken. Like dandellion, I will set my avatar down in a comfortable chair somewhere in the middle of a shopping sim and move my camera about to do all of my shopping, although I don't "spiderman" around like she does.

Like Veyron, I have an incredibly organized inventory - I have all of my "looks" in separate folders, labeled as to what they are compatible with. Copies of my shape, skin, eyes, hair, jewelry, etc. all in the same folder (with sub-folders :), so a single menu click will change my entire look. The only disorganized folder is my animations, and that's because I just bought some and have to classify them. Unlike Veyron, I really don't want a tagging system, I'd never remember all of the tags and then I would spend a *huge* amount of time "standardizing" my tags, I'd like either symlinks or just have everything be copy/no transfer.

Finally, like Raul, I was in the Navy and have tattoos all over my body, but unlike him I have my driver's license and am a 400 pound truck driver who wears red plaid, has a beard to my belly, and who answers to the call sign, "Bubba Joe Jim Bob Billy".

:P

Like usual, I'm in an odd mood, which would just make it a normal mood, well for me, for everyone else, it'd be odd.

Like Vint, I will cease the "chain letter" and not tag anyone - I'd have to spend hours googling for random SL blogs to find someone who hasn't been tagged already.

Mission Specialist Bambi And Her Amazing Pneumatic Space Sex Toys

Veyron has a link to a hysterical article about sex in space on her blog. A copy of her excerpt:

US and Russian
astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on
how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book
published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The
Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both
at Nasa [sic] and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings
have taken place.

“The issue of sex in space is a serious one,” he says. “The
experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married
couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to
Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible
without gravity.”

He cites a confidential Nasa [sic] report on a space shuttle mission in
1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions
possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the
best 10, he says. “Two guinea pigs then tested them in real
zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered
so sensitive that even Nasa [sic] was only given a censored version.”

Only four positions were found possible without “mechanical
assistance”. The other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable
tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: “One of the principal findings was that the classic
so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity
pushes one downwards, is simply not possible.”

This is priceless. I wonder how they convinced the guinea pigs to try those 10 positions :) I can see "serious scientists in lab coats" rigging up miniature sex harnesses to the guinea pigs and then saying in a stern voice, "now this time, no playing around, I want you to test the missionary position, not Kama Sutra position #712. That position is not one of the 'official' ones we are testing on this flight. Get serious you two, you are astronauts, not rodents." Followed by little rodent giggles as they go off to have wild, kinky rodent sex in harnesses while inside an inflatable tunnel.

My mind boggles at all of the questions this article raises. For example, how do I get a government paid job to write software to simulate sexual positions in space? That must be one of the wackier job descriptions, "Must have experience in physical simulation using 3D software and an intense interest in sex." How did they get that by HR?

What other "mechanical assistance" devices did they simulate? And how did they think of an inflatable tunnel as one of them? "Well, Sir, last night I was up late doing some, ah, 'research' on the Internet with regards to, ah, 'possible mechanical devices for aiding in engineering human to human coupling and interlocking in zero gravity', and I, ah, 'chanced' upon a website dedicated to, ah, 'human restraint in procreative and non-motile scenarios'. Then purely out of, ah, 'scientific curiosity', I downloaded all of the pictures on it, so I could do some, ah, 'in-depth analysis', and I saw a few things that might be the key to, ah, 'facilitating...', ah, um... Sir, permission to speak without euphemism?" "Just one question first Johnson. How much of this 'research' was done with your pants down around your ankles?" Looking abashed, Johnson answers, "all of it Sir."

Don't even get me started on how their "principal finding" was about the missionary position. I would love to read the research grant proposal for that one.

Also, it gives new meaning to the words, "Mission Specialist" Not to be confused with the words, "Missionary Specialist," which is evidently an untenable position.

I can imagine the pre-flight press interview... "I'm Smith from the Associated Press, and I have a question for Mission Specialist, ah, 'Bambi' is it? The press hand-out regarding your background is very short and very vague, your title is 'Research Assistant' and your background states that you have, ah, '... significant professional experience of vital importance to the mission.' But it never states what that experience is, can you provide more details?" Bambi, smacking her gum and twirling a finger in her bleached platinum blond hair, replies, "uh, what the heck did all that mean?" "What are you good at miss?" "Why didn't you just say that, handsome?" she smiles and bats her eyelashes at the suddenly uncomfortable reporter who has to sit down quickly and adjust his pants. "That's easy, I give great head, I'm double jointed, I don't get motion sick during sex, and I ride rockets every night," she giggles at her own joke. "Although, I am charging extra for the straps, inflatable tunnels, and the guinea pigs - that's kinky even by my standards. It has been great working with all of the guys down in the research department these past weeks, there were many long, sleepless nights spent rehearsing all of the astronauts I'm to do in space, oh wait, I was supposed to say, 'tasks that I'm to do in space,'" she says while using exaggerated "air quotes". "We plan to have a lot of fun on this mission, right Tiger," she ends winking at the, now blushing, Mission Commander.

I Do *Not* Act LikeThis... (Frequently)

Veyron has cast more aspersions on my character, making me out to be nothing more than a flirtatious tart. She sent me the following video and implied that this is essentially me and how I act.

Super Sexy Train Passenger - Free videos are just a click away
I can assure you all this is entirely unlike me. First, I don't ride trains, second, I'm blond, third, I would never wear an outfit like that because the top does not go well with that skirt. Finally, to really attract the eyes of the guys, don't wear black heels, wear white. Any stripper can tell you that.

See, entirely unlike me.

(Note: The use of polysyllabic words is in no way a reaction to the "bimbo" reading level of this blog.)

Words Cannot Do It Justice

Earlier this year, during the summer, a bunch of people told me about a sim where the "Starry Night" painting of Van Gogh was brought to life in Second Life. Life many other pilgrims, I ventured there to marvel at how well it was done and the magnificent idea that it represented - the ability to travel within one of your favorite paintings.

Robbie Dingo built it and this morning I stumbled accross a machinima called 'Watch the World(s)" showing the build from beginning to end. I can't say which is more impressive, watching it being built or moving around within it. Making it even more poignant is the music, Don McLean's "Vincent", it makes me sniffle and tear up hearing the words as the painting unfolds. Some parts of the video have been edited to appear abstract.

It is probably the best machinima I've ever seen - I can't stop watching it.

For a very low-res version of it, here's the YouTube version:


For more details on how it was made, New World Notes has an article about it. Finally, for higher resolution versions, go to Robbie's blog - the download is well worth it.

Mega-Prim Sculptie Earth With Satellite Imagery

I *have* to see this the next time I'm in Second Life. This is incredible looking in the photos.

From the picture caption:

Sculptie Earth features a topographic Earth model with cloud layer that displays real time weather patterns streamed from satellite data. Stills are taken 3 hours apart and 2 days of data is visible in the animation.


The first photo shows how big it is relative to other things in Second Life.

The second shows it close enough to see the relief.

The pictures are from Zee Pixel's Flickr stream.

And thanks to the Huge Prim Blog for the pointer.

You Know You're Famous When....

You make it into a word search puzzle. Dinee has a word search puzzle with a bunch of SL bloggers in it. Thanks Dinee.

I also think it says something about me that I also notice “naughty” words like ‘tit’ or crass consumer words like ‘jewel’. Not that I’m a gold-digging nympho or anything.

Now, if I can only make it into her blogroll. Of course, that would mean having to post more frequently and with more exciting things.

I Is A Smart Bimbo

Following the example of other authors, like Melissa Yeuxdoux and Lillie Yifu, rating the reading level of their blogs, I ran mine through the same service and guess what reading level this blog is:

Lillie's smart, she's in elemenshur... elmnt... grade school and Melissa's real smart, she's got rockets and jello shots on hers :)

Late Night. Can't Sleep.

It's 2AM and you can't sleep, what do you do? You wander around the Internet and find out what people have been writing about you while you weren't looking :)

Narcissim, thy name is Tiessa.

You find out that you haven't posted in nearly two months. You internally vow to return to your origins and log into Second Life more frequently. You begin to write a self-referential, hopefully humorous blog post about the whole situation, only to find out that you are nearly incoherent from lack of sleep. *sigh*

Perhaps I'll call it a night and go back to counting male strippers as I try to fall asleep. You can count sheep, I want to dream about sex with male strippers when I finally fall asleep - I'll let you dream about sex with sheep. Or maybe I'll try and count Veyron's doing various naughty things. Either way, yum.

What the heck am I doing still writing when I can have visions of boy toys and models dancing in my head?

Okay Vey, I'm An "Uber Cool Nerd God" (dess)

To satisfy Veyron's curiousity about my nerdiness, here it is...





And I must protest a few thing about the test:

The question, "While not at work working, what do you spend most of your time on the computer doing?" does not have the answer that I wanted, which is "writing code". I do not consider that "work", especially since I don't program work stuff :)

The question, "How's your romantic life?" does not have the answer I wanted, which is "Have multiple boyfriends/girlfriends". I guess that would be a vanishingly small sample size for this test anyway - the writers never conceived of anyone being able to pull that off :)

The question, "Speaking of Aristotle, he made a claim that later proved incorrect, which was that..." is wrong on so many levels, it should at least be "Which of the following was one of the claims Aristotle made that was later proven wrong?" - he made so many wrong claims, the use of the word "a" is highly incorrect.

Besides if you are going to choose cool philosophy figures, at least go with Plato or Socrates.

As far as programming languages go, there are far nerdier languages and questions to ask. For example, "Do you consider Lisp to be the best language ever?" Should boost your nerd score through the roof :) BTW, my answer to that would be "depends on the problem" :P

The Jeopardy questions are just stupid - I don't watch the show anymore because its too easy which bores me ;)

Don't even get me started on the inaccuracies of the "The Hundred Years war lasted 106 years." question.

And the fact that I carry a periodic table in my purse "in case of an emergency" does not make me a nerd :) You wouldn't believe how many times that's come in handy.

To be properly nerdy the question about choosing, "Your Life", "My Space", etc. should have an option for "Second Life" or some other comment on choosing a cyber-life instead of a real life, heck even one of those MMO would be better than "My Space" - the kinds of geeks this test is targetting sneer at My Space or wouldn't know social networking if it bit them.

By choosing "Mac" I get "Mac" and "Unix" - I bet they scored me lower for choosing the Mac - I think the test creators are not nerdy enough.

There really should be a question that asks whether or not you think the test is flawed, it doesn't have nerdy enough questions, or that you think the test creators aren't nerdy enough - that should boost your nerd score.

And finally, the term should be Goddess - idiots, didn't they even take into account the "sex" portion of their own test? I call that a bug - where do I go to get my money back?

Long Absences And Unexpected Exposure

Well, Real Life is about to slow down and I can return to writing more of the Mistress Strangelove series for your edification.

However, the reason I'm posting this is an unexpected exposure of me by Vint Falken on her blog. I went to the SL Bloggers meeting and she took a photo of me and is using it as an instruction device on retouching photos.

I just wish she could have used a less titillating photo.

Update (9/14/2007):
I finally followed Vint's link to the Flckr page for the photo and read the comments there.

My favorite one:
"I can't get past "Montgolfier", hot air, balloons.. and her tits."

And that's not even why I chose the name, although now I like it even more than before. Unexpected puns are the best.

The Hummingbird Address

From the steps of her palace in Hummingbird sim, Tiessa walks up to the podium to give her, soon to be famous, Hummingbird Address. This speech comes at a time of great strife in Second Life and she wishes to communicate her feelings about the condition of Second Life and her candidacy for Governorship of Second Life.

"Four score and sixteen months ago Phil brought forth on this net, the Linden Labs, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all avatars are created equal."

"Now we are afflicted by a great system outage, testing whether Second Life, or any Life so programmed and so untested, can long remain up. We are met on a sim impacted by that outage. We have come to dedicate a portion of that sim, as a final resting place for those avatars who here were disconnected that Second Life might remain up. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this sim. The brave avatars, connected and disconnected, who lived here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The Grid will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what bugs occurred here. It is for us the connected, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who were disconnected here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored avatars we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of connectivity -- that we here highly resolve that these avatars shall not have disconnected in vain -- that this Grid, under Tiessa, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the avatars, by the avatars, for the avatars, shall not perish from the Internet."

Looking solemn and aggrieved, she bows her head in reverence for the departed of Second Life, turns, and walks back to her palace, turning at the last moment before entering to whisper, "Apologies to the President."

Tiessa's Campaign For Governor

Tiessa, dressed smartly and primly in a severe business suit, steps up to the podium. She smiles sweetly to everyone in attendance and launches into her speech without formality or preamble.

"Friends, Lindens, avatars, lend me your IMs;
I come to skewer Phil, not to praise him.
The bugs that SL inflicts affect us all;
The fixes are oft broken in the updates;
So let it be with Phil. The noble media
Hath told you Phil was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Phil answer'd it."

"SL was my friend, faithful and shopping friendly:
But Phil was ambitious;
Having brought lag and bugs to us all.
He hath captivated many with Second Life
Whose wallets did the business' coffers fill:
Did this in Phil seem ambitious?
When that the avatars have cried, Phil hath wept:
Second Life will scale, just one more update will fix it!"

"You all did see that in the Town Hall
We presented him a grievous list,
Which Lindens dodged and spun the news?
Was this ambition bringing all to ruin?"

"I speak not to disprove what the Lindens spoke,
But here I am to speak what I know.
You all did love SL once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to throw out Phil?
O judgment! thou are fled to bad coding practices,
And programmers have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My password is mangled in the database with Phil's,
And I cannot log in until it is reset for me."

"When I do log in, I pledge to you;
Fair avatars and furries all:
My governorship will be beneficent,
The lag and bugs will disappear,
Lindens once again shall fill all hands,
And snoops and puritans shall not peer in
On anything consenting adults will do.
But not while Phil rules the grid."

Tiessa again smiles sweetly to all assembled and leaves the podium, turning at the last moment to whisper, "My apologies to The Bard."

If you are wondering what all this is about, read Vint's or Veyron's blog entries. This was inspired by reading Zoe's speech :)

Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

After my introductory weekend in Second Life, I was eager to return. I was astonished at how much I learned during my first weekend and wanted to learn and see more - I was addicted to it already. In a number of places I encountered the word Gor referring to some sort of group, I was curious as to what it was. My "performance" during my first cybersex frustrated me; I knew I wasn't that good. Not being good at something annoys me.

Another key to my personality is that I am very self-competitive. I dislike doing things at less than my potential best. Sometimes this translates into competitiveness with others, and some of my friends may quibble with what I am about to say, but I am rarely, truly competitive with others. I will play at being competitive, joke about it, and do my best, but I don't really take it as seriously as to whether I thought I did my best. Losing to others in a fair (or not so fair) competition doesn't irk me too much at all. No, my only true competitor is my own expectations. Its far more devilish a rival than anyone else could be.

Like many people, while I'm at work, I browse the web periodically; it's one of my stress relievers and I often find that a small break from a task allows me to come back to it and approach it in a new and better way. During one of these times, I remembered my curiosity as to what Gor was. As I write this, I recall I was wrong in my previous chapter, I hadn't learned about the word kajira or Gor's relationship to slavery from that man I met who had a slave, I had merely read it in a few places.

Imagine my surprise when I turned to the Wikipedia article and finally read what Gor was. It was a fantasy world that glorified the enslavement of women. I read the whole article about Gor - it was a series of fantasy novels set in a world called Gor. One of its central features was women as slaves, it talked extensively about the proper behavior of slaves, it had names for slave positions, and it had a small, but devoted following of people who practiced its "tenants". I find that as absurd as the people who learn to speak Klingon.

I was angry about slavery. I disliked the abasement of one person to another, the whole concept of domination and submission mystified me, and the fact people would willingly do all that astonished me. Realizing that in Second Life, it was all shared fantasy similar to cybersex made it easier to tolerate. However, I still thought it very unhealthy that someone would sublimate their own will and I thought it would just reinforce emotional instability and prevent people from taking responsibility for their own life and becoming better.

Then, I reached the part of the Wikipedia article that talked about Gor in Real Life. Evidently, some people live the Gorean lifestyle, with slaves who do their bidding, practicing all the mandated positions, and subjugating themselves on a permanent basis to a master. The Gorean masters prey upon emotionally disturbed women and keep them as slaves by breaking their wills. Through links off that page and other articles, I read stories of women rescued from those situations and how mentally crippled they were by the experience. I had read about the Stockholm Syndrome and the proclivity of institutionalized people to be unable to function outside of that environment and knew how evil enslavement and captivity could truly be. Now, I was truly angry, fantasy is one thing, but taking advantage of people in Real Life was intolerable. I couldn't do anything about it in Real Life, but I didn't have to tolerate the Goreans in Second Life - their mimicking of the Gorean practices seemed to trivialize the Real Life problems.

The final revelation about Gor that surprised me was that the concept of silks, those pretty, flowing clothes I liked in Second Life, originated as the clothing of the slaves. Darn, my favorite outfit was a set of silks. I realized I had been walking around in an outfit that broadcast, "I am a slave" and right now writing this, I realize that not only did the Gorean guy walk into Paradise Lost probably looking for an escort and saw me but that he also saw someone who he thought to be an escort who was also wearing silks.

During that week, at other times during my web browsing activities, I looked for blogs and other sites dedicated to Second Life. I discovered a number of them, but what really grabbed my attention were slboutique.com and slexchange.com. Now, I was even more dangerous, I could shop while at work. My wish lists instantly grew to gargantuan proportions and I spent far too much time and far too much money browsing those sites. In Second Life there were things to distract me from shopping, offline; the only change I could effect in Second Life was the purchase of things. Which I did while at work and then excitedly logged in that evening to try out.

One thing I still immensely dislike about Second Life shopping is the inability to try things on before I buy them. In Real Life, part of the fun of shopping is trying on all sorts of clothing to see which ones you like the best, in Second Life you had to go on the pictures provided. I never liked shopping for clothing on the web before for similar reasons, but now, with Second Life's prices being so cheap; I could afford to buy things just to try them on.

While at work, there was one thing I was not going to try to improve and that was my cybersex skills :) I hit upon the idea of looking for online sex stories to see what the characters said and how they said them. Swallowing my pride, I did something I had never done before, except by accident, I went looking for porn. Those spam messages describing all sorts of sexual activities, I quickly found out, were only the tip of the iceberg. Website after website of porn existed to cater to every conceivable type of proclivity; while I intellectually knew before that time that they existed, I had never experienced them except through a mislabeled or deceptive link on a webpage.

It took me many tries to get over my embarrassment long enough to do, what I like to call, research. With the offer of being an escort hanging over my head and my own disappointment at my virginal performance, I was seeing what it took to be better. Eventually, via the suggestions of a few folks at Paradise Lost who must have thought I was obsessive, I also began to look at online porn movies.

My god! The dialog was execrable in the ones that had dialog more sophisticated than, "Oh god! Oh. Give me that cock. Oh. *moan* *mumble* *slurp*." Is this what guys liked, I wondered? These women, in my opinion, were acting like trashy whores, had they no pride? No dignity? People didn't act like that in Real Life, did they?

Slowly, realization dawned on me that *this* was the dirty talk people had referred to all along and my few attempts in the past, I now realized, had been pitiful to say the least. In Real Life, I've always enjoyed sex and I began to wonder if trying this out would improve things. My personal goal of doing my best at anything I try kicked in and I knew I had to try out these ideas in Real Life. However, I didn't want to make a fool of myself, thankfully, Second Life came to the rescue and I had a handy place to practice before my Real Life dirty talk debut.

Not only was Second Life accelerating my learning and discovery of new things while I was connected to it and wandering around, it was also doing so while I was offline.

Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

My Voluntarily Released, Linden Labs Verified, Real Life Information

I was reading an article in Pixel Pulse Magazine about age and gender verification in SL and a comment in it raised a particularly trenchant point:

Chew on this... what if it's a guy using his girlfriend's account? Not so sure now, are we? Even with this verification in place, it's STILL possible for you to run into this type of thing that you are so afraid of.

Given a recent ruling from the courts that if a service provider attempts to restrict content on their site, they lose the protections against third party content that grew out of the "common carrier" exception, how does the age verification help Linden Labs protect against someone using another's account? Linden Lab cannot guarantee that a "child" will not use an already verified account or that the "child" will not use a flaw in the verification system to age verify themselves to an "acceptable" age. Given that "children" have nothing but time and given the nature of the Internet, I'm certain moments after the verification system goes into place, there will be lots of information available on how to circumvent the process. And since Linden Labs *attempted* to restrict access, will they now be liable for every instance in which it is circumvented?

Another comment struck me as funny:

Since when did LL become the arbiter of truth and trust?
Why are they adding these useless features when people can simply ask?
Do you need third party verification that my favorite flavor of ice cream is Chocolate?

Following on from that comment, the concerns over leaked information, and a post elsewhere that I can't find about the choices for the verification process being too limited to actually reflect reality, I give you my "Voluntarily Released, Linden Labs Verified, Real Life Information":

Age: Age of the universe less six days (Yes, I am really Lilith, the first woman. I am the very picture of insalubrious carnality and the incarnation of lust.)

Gender: weiblich (That's feminine to you non-German speakers - gender is a *language* term and a *word* has a gender not the actual person, place, or thing, the correct word for what you puritanical types are trying to refer to but are too squeamish to *type* is 'SEX'; please get it right in the future. Which leads us inevitably to...)

Sex: Lots (I had to submit numerous pictures of me in flagrante delicto. The pictures were purely for verification purposes, I was assured, and none of that information will be leaked on the Internet or available to satisfy the prurient interests of the sex-starved geeks responsible for writing the verification software.)

Social Security Number: 123-45-6789 (Have fun ruining my credit rating, I'll never need to buy a house.)

Address:
69 Oh God Plc
Fuck, ME 77777
(Now that you know my sex and all the other information about me, I'll leave a light on in the window every night for all you stalkers to get a good look at me undressing.)

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: I don't like any of the choices, but I must pick one, so, I'll stick with salad. (Considering the choices are: raw horseflesh, shrimp [with whole prawns], and a variety of other un-appealing flavors.)

I suggest we all start to "voluntarily" release all our information, because, what harm could it do? Does this post need the "mature" flag do you think?

Now, please pass the blue cheese dressing and let's eat. (No, I'm *not* referring to using the dressing on the salad ice cream, that would be gross, I have better uses for it :)

Submissive Jesus

Have problems with your prayers not being answered? Watch the "Submissive Jesus" video for one solution.

Which Barbie Are You?

While you wait for the next installment of my memoirs, you can find out which Barbie you are.

Mine is....

Which Barbie Are You? (pics)
Slut Barbie You're that naked barbie that you always see discarded on someone's bedroom floor........and you like it. (Atleast you aren't the beheaded barbie, whew!) Anyway, you have long since gave up on that Ken. You need that hot plastic injection and you need it now!
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 6: Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life
The third day dawned and I was excited to talk to my friend and tell her I was asked to be an escort at a club, especially since we had just talked about it the night before. I hadn't even had cybersex yet, how could I become an escort? Dancing made no sense to me either, why would anyone watch someone's avatar maneuver through the same set of repetitive motions over and over - let alone pay money for it?

I spent most of the day wandering around Second Life doing a little shopping, but my major spending orgy had subsided and I was merely window shopping in most cases. Also, my credit card was threatening to kill me if I didn't slow down. As it was, buyer's remorse had set in a few times, but I kept getting compliments on my appearance, which helped to mollify the tiny, fiscally responsible Tiessa inside. Poor thing, it was always outnumbered and ineffectual, I sympathized with it, but not enough to listen to it and stop spending money.

Each day in Second Life had resulted in numerous discoveries; little did I know that today would be no different in that regard. Second Life brought out more learning in a shorter period of time than I could have ever expected.

Eventually, my friend logged in and I told her all that had happened, including the fateful offer of employment as a dancer and escort at Paradise Lost. We both rejected doing that but we talked about it for a while. She eventually made some comments that egregiously generalized the people I had met, lumping them in with the same general class of people I originally thought worked in the sex trade. As you can tell from my previous writings, I am horrible at detecting prejudice and bigotry in myself, but I think I am still decent at seeing it in others. Being fairly hypocritical, I couldn't let her misconceptions continue, so I told her in greater depth about the conversation I had with the wonderful folks at Paradise Lost. We had discussed literature, philosophy, and science; they weren't unintelligent people who couldn't do anything but spread their legs and moan.

She had to leave and I wandered off to Paradise Lost to dance and talk. That was when I found out how dead Sunday nights in Second Life can be. This was still when there were frequently less than 10,000 concurrent users of Second Life.

I was alone, when a man walked into Paradise Lost. I thought, "Yay! Someone to talk to." I invited him to join me in the really nice dance animation I shared with Helena the previous night. We talked about lots of different things, what he liked about Second Life, how I was a newbie and was still learning a lot about Second Life, and, in general, just learning about each other.

It isn't until now, when I am writing this, that I realize he was probably showing up to Paradise Lost to find a dancer or an escort and I was the only one there, dressed as I was. I'm blushing in retrospect for what he thought I was. Does my cluelessness know no bounds?

He eventually told me about the house he was building. It was a rustic cottage among trees he was proud of and had been working on. I hadn't built a thing in Second Life yet and was impressed that someone could build a house - I thought it would require a lot of effort, technical knowledge, artistic skill, and special tools. He offered to show it to me and I accepted while making the prescient comment, "Is this the Second Life equivalent of asking me back to your place to show me your etchings?" We both laughed at my clever bon mot and teleported back to his place.

Second Life is incredible in that I could go back to a complete stranger's place within minutes of meeting him and feel perfectly safe - thank you Linden Labs for introducing me to a world I never knew existed, a world of safety. I have numerous friends who've been raped in Real Life and I have been in some situations that I thought were creepy and dangerous; one thing I am always cognizant of is the potential for being overpowered. It takes a while for me to feel comfortable enough with a guy to be completely alone with him. Meeting a guy in a club and minutes later going back to his home all alone is something that never would occur to me in Real Life. Second Life has introduced me to a feeling of safety and security that is unachievable in Real Life, thank you again Linden Labs - that experience alone is worth every penny I have given you.

He showed me around the cottage, it was very nice and he had spent time and thought into making it very cozy. This is the first time I saw sex pose balls in someplace other than a display at a shop and I also saw pictures of an attractive avatar in a collar and silks. I innocently went around asking questions about everything.

To reinforce with you how I act, I'd like to point out that I flirt constantly, with nothing more on my mind then enjoying a good laugh. I make frequent double entendres, fascinating myself with my own clever word-play and seeing if I can make better, more subtle, or more amusing ones all the time. It's a game I constantly play with myself and others just happen to be in the room providing the raw material for my fun; the world is my straight-man. Consequently, I have been accused on numerous occasions of being a tease. Not necessarily in such nice words either. Get used to it guys, just because I make a ribald comment or pun does not mean I immediately want to hop onto a sex pose ball with you.

I mentioned how it was nearly impossible for men to not hit on women, especially when they were alone together. He demurred, stating that he was happy with the love of his Second Life. Considering all the pictures of her around, curiosity got the better of me and I asked him how he met her.

"I met her in a rape room."

Startled and uncertain what to say for once, I floundered while all sorts of thoughts streamed through my head. Eventually the story all came out. He went to a place where people pretend rape scenes. She wanted to be raped and was turned on by it, he was turned on by raping women, and he reassured me he would never do that in Real Life. Yeah, right guy, I've been to the Brooklyn Bridge and I didn't see any 'for sale' signs on it. I may be blonde, a bimbo, and a ditz but I am not stupid. Now she was his kajira and he was thoroughly in love with her. Not knowing what a kajira was I asked further and that was when Gor was introduced to me.

So many things about this situation offended me on so many levels - rape, slavery, and the total abasement of one person to another. Here was a person who seemed very nice, perhaps a little strong and forceful, but confidence is a sexy trait, and he was telling me that he was turned on by raping women and owning them as slaves. So very matter of fact as if it was something the local church group would approve of. Visions of mousey men in dull suits sitting around talking about where to rape women, the best rape positions, and the correct whipping techniques crossed my mind. Ward Cleaver coming home from a hard day in the rape rooms to find June chained in her silks to a post in the kitchen where he gives her a light whipping and a kiss hello.

Normally, I'm pretty much "whatever floats your boat", but some things are just patently offensive. This situation started to creep me out, but the guy still seemed completely normal. And then, despite all his protestations to the contrary he did the thing I expected all along, "May I kiss you?" came the query.

As I predicted earlier and which he denied vehemently, he ended up hitting on me. I told him I was still new and had no idea how to kiss someone - I was still reeling from the whole rape and slavery thing and was just stalling while thinking. He showed me his kiss pose balls and we kissed briefly, mainly because I was curious and knew I was safe. I wanted to get out of there quickly. Finishing the kiss, I complimented him on his building skills and his choice of such a beautiful slave, but stated I had to get up early the next day and had to go.

I teleported back to Paradise Lost, the closest thing I had to a sanctuary and home at that point. There were a few people around I had never met and I started to talk to them. Eventually, they all left and I was left alone in Paradise Lost when another man entered.

We started up a conversation and began to dance the nice dance animation; I figured he couldn't be worse than the previous guy. Boy was I wrong :) [Edit: I know he will be reading this :P] Carl was a thin guy with a beard and, interestingly enough, a collar. This was the first time I'd seen a collar on someone besides the picture of that slave, so I asked him about it, why he wore if, if he too was a slave, etc. He stated he wasn't owned, but had been for a while, and deftly deflected most of my other questions about the subject.

Carl was far better at verbal banter, and far more interesting than the previous guy. We started by talking about chess, since he just lost a match to someone from Paradise Lost and seemed miffed by it. He was far more my type of guy, articulate, slightly geeky, but in a cute and adorable way. We talked about me being a newbie and, as in most conversations with guys, the subject eventually turned to sex.

After I expressed my lack of knowledge of cybersex and why it would be interesting, Carl tried to demonstrate a few lines he would type. I still didn't get it, I found it very hard to "get into" the head of the avatar and pretend like those things were happening to me. I laughed a lot, I giggled, and many times I unconsciously changed the subject to something besides sex. However, the subject always quickly returned to sex because of my continued joking about it.

At some point in this conversation with Carl, I made the decision to have cybersex if I could figure out how to do it properly. Carl was going to be my guinea pig. Further talking with Carl came up with an analogy to dirty talking, something I had always been too embarrassed to do in Real Life, but finally, I hit upon the idea that seemed to work for me, the shared creation of a fantasy. Using the descriptions of actions like a play direction for actors or writing a story about the characters from a first person perspective. It still seemed pretty pointless, but at least I had an idea of the verbal mechanics. If I got it out of the way now, I could put a checkmark next to it on my constantly growing list of things to do in Second Life, then, I could proceed on with more productive ways to spend time.

My intentions established, it still required Carl to be as patient as a saint and a Herculean effort on my part to remain serious for more than twenty seconds at a time for anything to happen. After a few hours of this (I never said I was rapidly successful in my effort, did I?), Carl finally mentioned which time zone it was for him and I realized he was three hours ahead of me and it was getting close to midnight for me. That sobered me up enough and I told him I wanted to try it but had no idea where to go. He had a place and we teleported back there.

One of the things Carl and I kept returning to in our conversation was high heeled shoes. I was wearing my color changing stripper heels I purchased the previous day and Carl liked the look of them. One of Carl's turn-ons was women in high heels and we talked about it for a while. When we got back to his place, he wrote lines about what he wanted to do with my high heeled feet, meanwhile I made observations about his room and was joking about non-related topics for a while before I settled in and realized I was going to have to do something "appropriate". I wrote back lines about how sore my feet were from dancing in those high heels all night and how I appreciated the massage and the toe sucking. It felt very unreal and my attempts were not that good - I had no experience with online sex and it showed.

Eager to show off my new purchases from Xcite and thinking that was "the way it is done in Second Life", I put them on and told Carl about them. Knowing Carl he probably made some remark about how "good girls like you pretend to be, don't immediately purchase that much Xcite gear." If he didn't say it, he probably thought it.

Carl also removed his clothes and "put on" his cock. He showed me the "up" and the "down" positions. It felt like we were both showing off our genitals as if they were fashion statements and discussing their features as if they were cars or computers. I was about to make a joke here about cocks and measuring their performance in horsepower, but that would be tasteless. And besides, a man's cock just can't measure up - okay, let me take that back, I have now seen cocks in Second Life that are nearly as big as their owner. If they had that in Real Life, the first time it got hard, they would die due to lack of blood to their other brain.

One of my "good girl" purchases at Xcite had been a blow job animation that I had installed in my "clit". I wanted to try it out, so I activated it and my avatar went down on her knees, grabbed an invisible cock in mid-air, and began to bob her head and stroke this non-existent penis. To say the least, I was disappointed, Carl was half-way across the room and my avatar was no where near him. Yet, there she was giving some ghost the blow job of his afterlife. It took a while to maneuver both avatars into place so that it looked nearly right.

The little green text that kept displaying was nice, but it quickly got repetitive. It took me forever to describe the actions I would do in Real Life without thinking, but now I had to translate them into words. This was definitely unlike Real Life sex; I'm not a big 'thinking sex' person :) It was like learning to write good descriptive text in a story - I have problems in writing descriptive text because, after all, *I* can picture it perfectly in my head, so, I unconsciously concentrated on the action and dialog, devoid of the setting. No one wants to read a story like that, this was the same, I automatically pictured it in my head but failed to translate a lot of that into useful text.

Around this time, my avatar had an orgasm, followed shortly by his avatar having an orgasm. Was I done? Was he done? How did this work? I'm used to more warning of an impending orgasm. In Real Life it would be time for him to roll over and go to sleep, but how did this work in Second Life? Still not quite getting the purpose of cybersex, I asked Carl if this was the end. We talked some more and discussed the problems of the animations, the Xcite gear, and I learned that the "arousal levels" were controllable. Carl had to go to bed; it was very late in the morning for me as well, so off to our respective Real Life beds we went.

I've contemplated this question some over the ensuing months, what is the ultimate purpose of cybersex and what is the ending point? In Real Life, the shared experience, the physical demonstration of an emotional bond, the mutual pleasure, and the culmination in orgasm by one or both partners all contribute to the purpose and "when it's done". I've since had many cybersex experiences where my partner had Real Life orgasms and that seems a natural ending point for them and their avatar. However, I have also had numerous experiences where it became almost a competition to create more and more inventive text. In the end, only through "out of band" communications via IM were we able to agree on an ending point.

This ended my introductory weekend to Second Life. I learned *a lot* about myself and this new virtual world that I was already addicted to. Thankfully, Real Life work was at a low point allowing me to plan more nights in the upcoming week that I could spend in Second Life. I already wanted to spend as much time there as possible, the exploration, the shopping, and the people were all major draws for me.

In the end cybersex was an interesting experience. Trying to coordinate typing creative text, activating animations, fiddling with Xcite attachments, and removing clothes was a far more complex and involved process than I thought. It was even more difficult than walking and chewing gum, which as a blonde ditz, can be pretty trying at times. I'm not joking; this simple activity has caused numerous problems in my life. I'll be walking along, my mind will wander, and the next thing I know I've walked straight into a brick wall. I have had the scraped nose and headache to prove it.

Next Chapter: One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research

Don't Stand So Close To Me

NPR has a video interviewing a researcher from Stanford who studies Second Life social phenomena, the video, "Don't Stand So Close To Me", talks about proximity and staring and how the avatars in Second Life conform to Real Life societal norms about personal space. I don't buy all the conclusions discussed in the video, a lot of it was anecdotal without any statistics to confirm them, maybe the researcher has them, but they weren't talked about in the video.

(Via The Click Heard Round The World)

Kurt Vonnegut Quote

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be"
- Kurt Vonnegut

Mistress Strangelove Is Running Behind

Darn RL and its incessant demands - I'm sorry the chapter is running behind, but RL is really slowing me down this week. I will publish it as soon as I can.

Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 5: Would You Dance With Me?

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

In Real Life I was tired and my eyelids were drooping, but I wanted to go to one more place, Lost Dog, the store with the good, but expensive animation overrider I was looking at earlier. I wandered around their store looking at all the other animations first, trying out the dances and poses. And that's when I heard the five words that would change the course of my future in Second Life, although I didn't realize it at the time.

"Would you dance with me?" came the query. "I'd like to test out this dance animation for my club and it would be easier if I had a partner," a beautiful blond in a little black dress named Helena Kirkorian said. Helena has a particularly ebullient chat style, I won't even attempt to replicate it or imitate it. You have to experience it yourself. I will instead stick to the essential things that were said.

"You mean me?" I said looking around and finding out I was the only one standing nearby.

"Yes, it won't take long and it would help me out a lot."

"Sure," was my answer, the word that most defines me, and will probably be my epitaph.

As I mentioned before, I am usually game to try out anything once. I dislike the 'contempt prior to investigation' attitude, even though, if you've noticed I've practiced it a lot in the first two days of my Second Life existance.

I clicked on the pink portion of the duet dance and quickly began dancing a nice, solo dance.

"That's not usual," the pretty blond said, "usually the avatar stands still until the other one is clicked on."

I was willing to take her word for it, having never used a two person animation yet in Second Life. She clicked on the blue portion and we were quickly dancing a very well done dance.

"I'm not used to leading," she joked as her avatar twirled mine about in a complex tango. "Those silks look really good on you, I can tell you've spent a lot of time making your avatar look good."

I blushed. Here was someone with real Second Life experience complimenting me on my choices. I realized I must have been doing something right. After finding out I was a complete newbie, she stated she was even more impressed. All worries and regrets about spending all that money on my avatar melted away.

We talked and danced for over an hour, while a series of friends of hers teleported in, chatted, and then went about their business. She told me about the club she ran, Paradise Lost, and that she was outfitting it with some more dances and this one seemed very good.

Paradise Lost! That's one of my favorite works of literature. Milton packed more insight, characterization, and story into that one piece than most writers could possibly produce in their entire lives. I've read it enough times that I can't accurately count them.

One of my favorite excerpts is the following:

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since hee
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th' associates and copartners of our loss
Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
Regaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell?

Note that within the space of such few lines, are introduced three phrases that are still well known in English.

We talked about Paradise Lost (club and book), literature, religion, and philosophy. She invited me back to the club to see it and to meet a few people. In Real Life, I love dancing in clubs and having found out there were clubs in Second Life, I was anxious to see one, especially one themed after my favorite piece of literature. In Real Life, I've never seen a club with such a bold theme, they pander to the lowest common denominator, throw in a dance ball, a few lights, a fog machine, and let the DJ play some bland tracks and you have yourself a club.

I quickly bought the AO I was debating about and we teleported back to Paradise Lost. Worries about how much it cost disappeared, I was energized about meeting people that I could talk about literature and philosophy with and I just wanted to get there quickly. The concept of listening to good music, 'dancing', and good conversation had a strong allure for me.

At that time, Paradlise Lost was located at the end of a mall in a three story building. It was decorated as a cathredral with stained glass, a huge pipe organ, and an altar. Thankfully, in Real Life I had been to a brew pub set in an old cathedral where the brewing apparatus was on the altar, so a dance club in a cathedral didn't set off the Catholic blasphemy sense pounded into me and honed by years of instruction by nuns.

It was gorgeous. I hadn't been in Second Life long, but this place was tremendous and I started to finally see what I assumed Second Life was going to be like - fantastic places brought to life in a virtual environment. It wasn't just about sex as I was starting to think from my trip to Xcite and and all the trollops I'd seen standing around and blinging. I oohed and aahed appropriately and commented about all the nice touches I noticed.

I met Helena's friends, Dakota, Rob, and Brianicus. Some of the core people who ran the club. The place was empty except for us. Helena and I showed off the new dances to the others and we all joined in dancing and talking.

I don't think I've had that much fun in a club in ages. We danced for hours more that night, talking about literature, science, philosopy, and religion. We made endless amounts of jokes based on religion, sex, and heaven and hell. This was truly the moment I became addicted to Second Life. Shopping is great, building is great, scripting is great, but finding people you are this comfortable with and have so much in common with is priceless. Mastercard could make a commercial about it.

Where else could I talk about everything from cosmology, to literature, to Tao philosophy, make jokes filled with innuendo and sly puns, and listen to great Euro dance music? And better yet, have others talk about the same thing? I could go to any other club and hold a monologue on those subjects, but at Paradise Lost, I learned from the people around me. Here were people that could contribute to a conversation like that and seriously challenge my knowledge of them. I still haven't found a better place in Second Life and at that point, I resolved to go there as much as possible. This was incredible.

After a few hours of this, came the next line that would change my Second Life for good. Helena had a streak going that night. Helena asked, "would you like to work here at Paradise Lost? You would fit in perfectly."

Finally, here was the job offer I was looking for in my first day in Second Life and it was only my second day. Things were looking up for me. Paradise Lost seemed to be a great place to be, with wonderful people who had similar interests and tastes as I did. In Real Life, I'd ran raves, I'd worked in clubs, and I still went to them regularly - I was very suited to working in a dance club.

"What would I be doing?" I asked excitedly.

"Dancing and escorting," Helena replied and then added with a sly smile, "Although, you will have to interview with me before you can be an escort."

Dancing! Escorting! I was in a den of the sex trade! How could that be? These people were well educated, fantastic conversationalists, and in general the complete opposite of my mental pictures of what escorts and people who worked in the sex business would be like. And worse, they saw me as someone who would be good in the sex business. I may be dressed like a hooker, I reassured myself, but I was nothing like one, okay, after meeting these people, perhaps I was similar to one, but I continued to cling to my resolve, I wasn't going to do it.

The pieces of the puzzle began to click into place. The dance poles scattered about the place, took on a whole new meaning. They are not completely unusual in Real Life clubs nowadays where stripper chic has infiltrated the culture of acceptable behavior. Also, a few of the comments before started to make more sense. Yet again, I had been clueless and blond and couldn't add two and two to get a reasonable four.

What was I to do? I couldn't insult these people, they were great and I wanted to spend more time talking with them. But, me, a stripper and escort? Never. Maybe I could just hang out here and talk with the people and not work here. Somehow, I could ignore what they did.

"Thank you for the generous offer Helena, I'll think about it," I replied.

We danced, talked, and laughed some more before everyone had to go to bed. My second day in Second Life had been a long one and I learned a lot and changed a lot. I went to bed with the whole concept of escorting and dancing running through my head. I was definitely not going to do either, but I definitely wanted to report back to my friend who had first mentioned the idea to me. Now I had tales to tell her of my own.

My ideas about escorts had to shift, Helena and Dakota were wonderful and completely opposite to what I originally thought of as an escort. Evidently they could deal with their situation and reconciled it in their mind. But I was certain I would never do it, it was wrong, it was dirty, and it just wasn't for me.

I may be a bimbo, I may be loose, and I may be easy, but I knew I wasn't so easy that waving a little money in front of me would get me into bed. I had my pride. Before going to bed with a guy, I had to like him or at least find him cute or be drunk. A momentary flash of what it would be like to be an escort crossed my mind and was instantly dismissed. As I drifted off to sleep, I knew it wasn't going to happen, I was adamant about that.

Next Chapter: Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum

The Growing Neko Fashion

It seems a number of people are going 'Neko'. I should post pictures of my own Neko experiment and in an upcoming chapter of my memoirs, you will get a taste of my RL Neko day last Halloween.

I love the link Vint posted to the Web Neko code that allows you to put a cute little Neko on you page. And I'm even happier that it works with Blogger.

Click on the cute little cat and watch it run around your web page.

Keep Your Friends Close And Your Enemies Closer

I wrote up my one experience with the Alliance Navy in a previous post, where I ended up asking a number of the sailors I encountered, "Who is your enemy?" No one could answer that question. They had guns, they were told to guard the base, but they didn't know who to guard against. They ended up not being able to keep out a bored escort, I didn't think they would be successful against a determined enemy, especially if the enemy showed up in camoflage mini-skirts.

Recently the Second Life Herald posted that the Alliance Navy is in a war! Finally, my question was answered.

As reported earlier, attempts by Herald correspondent Urizenus Sklar to mediate peace talks failed recently and the Alliance Navy, one of the oldest military organizations in SL, and the Merczateers, a former ally of the Alliance Navy, began open warfare for the oldest causes of war in human history; land and pride.

A few months ago, the Alliance Navy and the Merczateers were allies. As with any organizations that compete in the same arena, there was a certain amount of competition between the two but in general they shared the same goals and operated as well as any alliance can.

So, the answer is that they fight with their erstwhile allies! The drama demonstrated in the comments to that article, is amusing. The guys, who are supposedly the stable, non-emotional and logical ones, are having a cat fight over hurt feelings and who stole who's knife. Evidently the admirals and generals are having a hissy-cow over some minor thing and started a war over it. And people say I can be moody and vindictive.

If you substitute 'curling iron' or 'boyfriend' into this, you could have any old drama I'm used to seeing. The difference is that when someone steals my boyfriend, I do passive aggressive things like destroying their reputation by spreading the rumor that they are a slut. The guys, not to be out-done, do overtly aggressive things like launching a war and destroying property. Isn't there such a thing as "proportional response"?

Make Me A Bimbo

I was going through my Google Analytics and looking at what people who came to my site from Google searched for.

make me a bimbo: Type this into Google and I'm the *third* result - yay me! In searching for just 'bimbo' to see if I placed in the top 10 pages, which I don't, I found this wonderful definition of bimbo: "Bimbo is short for the term 'body impressive brain optional'." That has got to be my new slogan.

Perhaps I will start a deportment school to teach 'How To Be A Bimbo' to innocent wallflowers who want to blossom. Or write 'An Idiot's Guide To Being A Bimbo". Even better, write 'A Bimbo's Guide To....' I'm making a mental note to start a new series based on that idea as soon as possible. Heck, I'll trademark it :)

Other notable Google search terms that lead to my page are:
"second life" "mistress" escort: For which this site places *second* - now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the submissive male clients to roll in :)

screaming catholic orgasm: Something I know *nothing* about. Or so I would have the nuns believe.

second life alliance navy: Where I place on the fourth page. BTW, I found out who the Alliance Navy's enemies are. I will post that separately.

Going through the referrals and the search terms is always amusing for a site. You end up discovering the weird things people search for.

This Is Just Sad

The Second Life Insider has a post showing a Machinima memorializing a member of the teen grid, Kit Axon. Kit had to leave her friends behind and go on to the adult grid, her best friend won't be migrating for *two years*. It's a wonderfully done machinima, have the tissues ready if you are anything like me.

Veyron Supercharge, Welcome To Meta-Blogging

I received an IM from someone who read my blog last week, a certain Veyron Supercharge. After talking and learning a lot about her, she decided to jump into the meta-blogging world and share her experiences. I wish I could give some things away about her upcoming experiences, but that would spoil all the fun. Go over and watch the stories unfold.

Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 4: With Bells On

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

My second day in Second Life was a Saturday and I spent all day logged in, I was addicted already and I hadn't noticed. I went to the Xcite store and looked around. The blushing and the laughing in Real Life continued as I saw clits, cocks, and more exotic accoutrements. I was constantly surprised at each new thing I discovered. I noticed the BDSM section and gave it a wide berth, I may be looking at pierced clits and cocks that erupt virtual semen, but I was not one of *those* sickos I reassured myself.

You may be wondering how I could be continually surprised at each new discovery. That, at some point, I would actually "get it". I have thought about it a lot and my only explanation is that I have terminal naiviety, a short-term memory like a sieve, and an attention span that makes a hyperactive gnat look like a Zen Master.

In the end, my shopping addict took over and I bought "one of everything". Well, one of everything that a nice, wholesome, normal American girl would buy. You know, a clit, nipple clamps, belly piercing, hair, butt, lips, sounds, a HUD, and animations for all occasions. The type of things your mother would approve of, you know, normal.

Somehow, I was purchasing all of these things without the slightest conscious intention of using them. Probably a subconscious part of me was intrigued and thought trying out cybersex once would be informational. And I couldn't disappoint my future cybersex partner by not being fully "accessorized", could I? Besides, I'd always said to myself I'd do most anything once, I dislike the "disdain before investigation" attitude. Rationalization, your name is Tiessa.

Having completed that shopping spree, in which I bought *more* Lindens, I was now fully outfitted. Proper Second Life sex was expensive and I still had no examples of how it worked or what occurred. You may wonder why I didn't go about cybersex in a more cautious, learn as you go, and incremental purchase method. If you scan back over the preceeding paragraphs, I'd like you to notice the words blond, ditzy, naive, and shopaholic which are all important parts of the answer. Also, if I tended to be that type of person I wouldn't have a life reminescent of a Lucille Ball skit, I wouldn't have any of these experiences, and you wouldn't be reading this from me but rather from some other occasionally self-reflective blonde ditz.

I am a perfect example of Santayana's "doomed to repeat it" comment as it applies to personal experiences and history. I don't usually commit the same mistake twice, but I do make similiar mistakes by not properly generalizing what happens to me or carefully considering my actions in light of previous incidents. In the end though, I don't really want to "fix" that about me. I enjoy being me to no end and only when my mistakes harm others do I feel motivated to change.

My personal philosophy is pretty simple, approach everything as if you were a child seeing it for the first time. The continual wonderment over the marvelous universe where each tree and blade of grass is unique and deserving of hours of examination is central to who I am. Its why I became a biologist and why I have an abiding love for cosmology. I frequently say, "I may grow older, but I will never grow up." In the end, I don't want to lose that fresh view of everything. Perhaps I'm an experience junky who enjoys the continual rush of newness.

That's also how I approach people - I like meeting people and experiencing them the same way I do everything else. I love the uniqueness and differentiation between individuals, what motivates each person and why they do what they do. Unfortunately, I am also an inveterate meddler when it comes to other people. I like to "help" people, where "help" is often defined as "what I think they need." You'll see numerous examples of that in the coming tales.

The one Xcite gadget I purchased that I was squeemish about was the nipple clamps. However, given the choice between an invisible "no jewelry" option for boobs and a "with jewelry" option, I had to go for the jewelry, didn't I? It was a bargain, functional jewelry for only a few Lindens more than the base model. Besides the model I chose had bells on it and when I walked they jingled. After that discovery I wore them everywhere, polite company or not, I loved the sound of them jingling. And it was easy to cognitive dissonance away the fact that the jingling was actually bells clamped to my nipples that shook when my boobs wobbled as I walked, in fact, until I began to write this sentence I never really realized that. I'm blushing heavily in retrospect for many months of cluelessnes.

When I was buying my blue silks at the beginning of this shopping spree, I noticed a couple of trashily dressed girls who must have been hookers. They were blinging from every attachment point on their body and dressed in skimpy, sexy clothes. All I knew was that I was not one of those types of girls. I had style, sophistication, and class. Somedays I wonder how I never saw "normal" clothing during that first day in Second Life, no t-shirts, jeans, or sweaters. The first few shops I went to had silks and it was all downhill from there. Besides, its 'warm' in Second Life and I had no need of wearing jeans or sweaters for weather purposes. I wouldn't wear them to the beach would I? I'd wear a skimpy bikini like I do in Real Life. Second Life was one big opportunity to wear beach clothing as far as I was concerned.

At the beginning of my second day in Second Life, I was dressed in newbie clothes I created myself. At the end, I had platinum blond hair, blue silks, stripper shoes, big boobs, and all the Xcite toys my poor avatar could carry. I was fully kitted out, but I kept rationalizing that I may be a bimbo, but a bimbo with class. I was not trashy or even worse, a prostitute like those other women I saw today, I just happened to dress exactly like one.

Next Post: Chapter 5: Will You Dance With Me

Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 3: If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

It was getting late and I ended up talking to the same people that destroyed my credit card by telling me how to buy Lindens. The discussion eventually turned to money and how to make it. We talked about building, designing clothes, scripting, land sales, rentals, and a myriad other ways to make money. The first big name companies had just started to make islands in Second Life and the future looked bright - how were we to divert some of that money into our purses?

Mostly though, we just socialized, telling a little about ourselves and sharing in the excitement of hanging out with new people. I was fascinated by the interpersonal dynamics of Second Life, the fact that people had boyfriends and girlfriends and lived together in virtual houses. They had fights, drama, and all the tropes of Real Life, only transplanted into the virtual world. It was my first virtual world experience, I didn't know what to expect.

I laughed at the concept of giant, cartoon penises having relationship issues. It was only the first time of many that the fundamental absurdities of Second life would make me laugh so hard my sides hurt in Real Life.

Finally, only two of us were left talking and she offered to show me the house her and her boyfriend shared. We teleported over there and she showed me the place. It was nice with chairs, bedside tables, and everything. Very cosy looking. Its very normalcy was surprising.

I asked about her relationship with her boyfriend and that's the moment when the word, cybersex, entered my lexicon. A lot of discussion ensued while I tried to puzzle out this strange concept. I asked questions, laughing and blushing in Real Life as the details unfolded. She was great, telling me all about it and giving me examples of what she typed. Earlier, she alluded to something I might find interesting, but only when we were in private. Now that we were alone, I asked her what it was and the concept of Xcite genitals was introduced.

More discussion and more Real Life blushing and laughing ensued. Then came the demonstration. She showed me her clit, a very personal thing, and told me how it worked, about arousal levels, about the green text and animations. Then came a demonstration of the animations which ultimately resulted in her avatar screaming out an orgasm and sparks erupting from her clit. Laughing and giggling ensued as I talked about how absurd I thought it all was. My Real Life clit felt somehow deficient - fireworks never erupted from it no matter how good the orgasm.

We talked about how she once thought about being an escort, but ultimately rejected the idea. She asked me if I ever thought about being an escort and I told her I hadn't realized cybersex existed until she told me about it. Internally, I noted that I may be a bimbo, but I was not a prostitute, I had my pride.

Cue smugness over being a morally righteous person.

You may be wondering how I got to that point without knowing about cybersex and the sex trade in Second Life. Let me explain. In the articles I read, it did mention escorts briefly. In walking around I did encounter cyber-doxies with their blinging jewelry, sexy clothing, blond hair, and Playboy shapes. I knew about it in an abstract sense, but knew nothing of the mechanics of it, about cybersex, about the animations, etc. The concept sat in the back of my head, but I spent no time thinking about it and how it could possibly be accomplished. I thought it possibly meant arranging assignations in Real Life after meeting in Second Life.

When reading about Second Life, I never thought I would run into any of the sex trade. In Real Life, I've possibly seen a prostitute walking the streets once or twice in my life. I thought it would be nearly as rare. And certainly discussing being an escort as a viable option in normal conversation never crossed my mind as possible. I just asssumed, naively it turns out, that given all the potential inherent in a virtual world, people would do something more productive with it than have sex. I continually overestimate and underestimate humanity.

Already the cracks were appearing on the comfortable, naive shell I'd built around myself all my life. Growing up in a small farming community in the Midwest, going to a Catholic grade school, and, in general, thinking of myself as a 'normal' person had insulated me from thinking about the bulk of humanity.

I pride myself on my perspicacity, but, now, I realize my obtuseness is vastly larger than I ever suspected. I'd always thought that sex played a minor role in my life and I assumed others' lives. The realization that cybersex was common and that sex played a dominant role in other's lives began to dawn on me that second day. Finally, in writing this it hit me that I spend most of my time engaged in quasi-sexual activities. I spend inordinant amounts of time worrying about what men think, I spend a lot of time fixing my makeup and hair, I shop for sexy clothing, I go out a lot and flirt with guys, I had lots of sex in college and afterwards, and in general, I now realize, I spend a good portion of my time focused on activites centered around the human mating ritual.

Second Life has been very good for learning about my self. I always believed I was open-minded and tolerent. Now, reviewing all my thoughts and attitudes coming into Second Life, I realize I was as close-minded and intolerent as anyone else.

My friend had to go to sleep at that point, but I was too excited about Second Life to go to sleep. I decided to check out Xcite, looking couldn't hurt could it? The journey to Xcite was purely for informational purposes and a certain amount of morbid curiosity. I had no plans to ever have cybersex, it made no sense to me. Besides, I was too normal of a person to ever do that.

I was surprised that my friend considered being an escort. I *knew* I was never going to be an escort. Superficially, I recognized that I looked like one, but I knew I wasn't one of them. I was a nice, normal girl with a taste for sexy clothing. Escorts were dirty; I was clean and pure. Granted, for some, "'normal' American sex with lots of guys" definition of the word pure. Okay, maybe not always so 'normal'.

So, off went this clean, normal, and pure girl to the store to look at virtual genitals and sex gadgets as I mulled over the concept of cybersex. I may be easy and I may be slutty, I reassured myself, but at least I don't take money for sex.

Cue smugness over being a morally righteous person.

Next Post: Chapter 4 : With Bells On

Have Cock Will Travel

The Second Life Herald has an amusing article entitled "Have Cock Will Travel" that reminds me too much of myself. The author relates his dating experiences in Second Life.

The emotion and anticipation of real dating was all there and I would actually shave in real life before a Second Life date. Like the real life dates of my single days, things often went wrong for the occasion. Once, I arranged to meet my lady on a spectacular mountain top pinnacle looking over a beautiful valley. I was looking out over the vista when I sent her a teleport invitation that materialized her in front of me in the mid air over the open valley. I got one quick glimpse of her before she plummeted several hundred feet into the foggy valley below.

A few other anecdotes show how he's "too clever by half" and how he causes various other plummeting related date experiences. Mental note, never accept a date invitation from Mariner Trilling.

Secrets And Confessions

Vint is asking people to post secrets about themselves in SL and RL that they haven't revealed before. This is going to be hard, considering I'm posting so much revelatory stuff in my Mistress Strangelove series. I'll try to recap some of my revelations and think of something juicy to throw in.

SL:

• I am a bimbo - wait that's obvious.
  
• I am an escort - wait until you read about my amusing experiences in that profession.
  
• I have tried out being a Mistress on numerous occasions - I don't think I'm giving away too much about the future course of the Mistress Strangelove series to reveal that.
  
• I have tried out being a sub on a few occasions - not so obvious.
  
• I have created an alt - I needed it to do script testing. Its never been out of my villa since I created it.
  
• Like one other reply to Vint, once last year I did fake a crash late one night to ditch a particularly persistant IMer. I abruptly logged out and went to bed - next day I said my client crashed. Yech, I hate lying.
  
• I do occasionally let IMs linger unanswered for a while if I'm busy.
  
• I have always publically admitted I take notes about people - nothing wrong about that. If you haven't noticed I can be a bit ditzy and associating names with stories is not alwasy easy for me. I don't do it to fake sincerity, I do it so I can remember what kinks they like and phrases that seem to work particularly well.

RL:

• I am a bimbo - wait that's obvious.
  
• I am *not* an escort :)
  
• I work for a big corporation.
  
• I can be slutty and a tease on occasions. Okay *most* occasions :)
  
• As I mentioned in my series, I do have black hooker boots with 2" platforms and 6" heels. I have worn them in public. On more than one occasion. Sometimes on days other than Halloween :)
  
• I wear thongs or something skimpier under my clothing.
  
• I was a tomboy as a kid, climbed trees, and generally did a bunch of "non-girlie" stuff. I still climb one of my favorite trees sometimes when I go home to visit my parents.
  
• I like cold pizza for breakfast (the food of the gods) and not peanuts.
  
• I am a natural blond (although I do lighten).
  
• I sleep in nothing but panties.
  
• I have no hair below my head ;) (except on my arms - shaving that would be weird)
  

Nothing particularly earth-shattering - I'm pretty open about most things except my identity. And I'm going to be writing about everything amusing or interesting I did in SL, just keep reading the ongoing story - I don't plan to leave anything out.