Kami-no-aisuru

freestyle freestyle your style freestyle, where y’at, now d’ere y’go

Truth is lately I’ve been feeling a bit keep-to-myself-ish and a tiny bit emo, no real reason for it. Small episode of burnout I guess? I got the Sims3 which is really awesome and totally cutting into my other funtime for stuff like SL and listening to podcasts and watching tv/movies online. I’ve been keeping up with Big Brother Uk which is like an every day deal (great place for news & discussion about it). Maybe I’m just trying to do too much at once. Sometimes I just want to turn off all the various monitors (desktop laptop DS tv) and read some more of the Jane Austen compendium I’ve been working my way through.

I have some problems in the group chat because it goes by so quickly and I space out so often I don’t keep up very well and I’m awul about not saying hello & goodbye, I wonder if some people aren’t annoyed with me sometimes. I’m pretty awful at communications across the board, I don’t mean anything against anyone in particular. Then again I might just be whinging out of insecurity. Maybe a few weeks and everything will balance out ok.

I did a custom job the other day, recolored my Sakura tree into white for a shopping center, for the Touche’ main shop and mall… so whenever that remodel is done I’ll go get some pictures of it.

My cat’s doing a lot better, for anyone who was reading my plurks about him. He had an infection and the vet put him on antibiotics but they’re done now and he was given a clean bill of health. I had to switch his food to some non-allergy kind and he’s not liking that too much but his coat is so soft now and his eyes are all bright and shiny, so I think it’s working well for him. \o/  She thinks he needs dental surgery but its very expensive and I have no job so…  yeah.  We’ll see.

OK I don’t really have an answer for day 4’s question so I’ll just rattle on about building stuff ok?

Couple lines of thought have converged in my head recently, one that I’m planning to rebuild my store but have yet to come up with a real plan or idea for how I want it to look. Two that I visited the Cioccolata sim and wandered around there for their hunt and spend most of my time admiring the design. I’m having problems coming up with a single area that has accomplished as well as they have the kind of whimsy and imagination while also being extremely computer-friendly and without being too cloying.

Great imagination they’ve used with a stort of loose toys n trees theme-as constructed of a set of vintage wood blocks, buildings that are robot heads and giant acorns, wind-up birds, dolls, etc. Adorable! yet everything is primwork, very quality primwork, but you’d be hard pressed to find many sculpts in the actual store builds. And almost everything has the same texture, with tinting used to full effect. This makes everything load so quickly! It’s also interesting to me that in this modern age when we think anything that hasn’t got baked in highlights and shadows looks “a bit too 2006″ that place looks very new and fresh using just one texture and a few shades of tint. I also love that by using a muted kind of earthtones palette, they kept it from being too juvenile or sugary, if they’d used pastels or something I fear it would have been just too much. In short I have great admiration for their imagination and their skills.

What does this have to do with my remodel? Just because I don’t have an idea yet but I know some of the properties I’d like it to have, because of my visit to Cioccolata. I want cuteness that fits with my kind of cartoony, surrealist creations, I want innovation and imagination, I don’t want it to be anything typical, and I want something that will not only be economical on prim use but also texture use and still look interesting and fresh. Quite a challenge.

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?

I suppose with those restrictions I’d end up making it a sort of art-space, maybe change it all 4 times through the year, to match the seasons, art/sculptures on display, interactive stuff, garden spaces, gathering spaces. Something more imaginative than your usual boards-on-walls SLart gallery, something more like Chakryn Forest or Hotel Dare. Immersive, a place to explore and see and experience-alone or with others. Springtime might be a celebration of new life and nature, with a huge garden/forest, surrealist, a bit Alice-in-Wonderland. Giant flowers, trees, a cloudscape level with a celebration of rain. Summer might be all under water, featuring myths of mermaids and monsters, volcanic heat vents, teeming fish, coral reefs. Fall would need a horror element as a nod to Halloween-though all the scenarios I can think of are so cliche (nightmare city, urban slasher, quaint Victorian menace, sinister cornfields and farmhouse basements, disturbing circus sideshow, gothic/vampire royalty in oh so black castles, post apoc zombie/mutant wasteland). Winter would have to be iced over, frozen lakes, snow fairies, frost giants.

I’d love to have a whole sim to control, the ground painting, terraforming, the skies, earth & ocean completly under my control.

Describe what your perfect Second Life day would be like.

There would be shopping, oh yes. Something pricey like some Bax Coen boots or finally getting my dream skybox. Shopping spree likely funded by amazingly handsome/talented/generous someone I just met this perfect day who wants to know all about me and give me stuff and go dancing. Who may or may not have elf ears on or be dandified.

Some huge blogger or set of bloggers would have written about my store and a legion of cool stylish and nice avatars swarm in and buy at least one of everything. I get word I won some kind of Linden contest wherein I have a whole sim given to me. My Tiny Empires gets the Trader notice and for once he’s generous and I end up with enough gold to buy so many acres! And right after Trader Festival comes and that old fortuneteller finally gives me my fuckin’ key!

Mr. Tall Dark and Mysterious wants to take me dancing and the day closes with a sweet slow dance on a balcony overlooking an amazing garden/forest/beach.

OR

I spend time quietly building stuff, keeping to myself, no crashes, no glitches, all sculpts loading very fast, all textures linging up so closely and so quickly. I can zip through my inventory and find everything I need immediately without having to search for it or look through things, I just go automatically to the best thing for the job. Because of the no-difficulties I build something so amazing in 1/4 the time I usually do and I know that it will be my best creation yet and people will really like it.

So in the interests of actually putting some content in here I’ve signed up for Ali’s Big Bad Blogger Challenge again. First off, I do not consider myself a blogger, I do not write often enough for any kind of title to be given to the mutterings I make online. So the current question “How long have you been a blogger? How has it enriched your life?” I don’t feel really applies to me, because I’m not a blogger and I don’t write often enough for it to be particularly enriching.  Cathartic sometimes, maybe. Mostly an exercise in second-guessing myself, and wearing out my backspace key. Can’t write that, too pathetic, never be believable.

Anyway, in the interest of having a topic, I thought I’d talk about this NoH8 campaign going on. SL seems to have latched onto this vehemently, having their pictures made, and thats cool. I won’t be doing it though. I am rabidly in opposition to Proposition 8, I am a total supporter of gay marriage, gay adoption, and the GLBTv/Ts/Bi communities as a whole. However I just don’t see what taking a few hundred/thousand pictures either of real people or virtual people is going to do to help. Only use I can see is awareness/ad campaigns, and I believe awareness is already at a saturation point. I feel like this the same way I felt when people had the “take your wig off/go bald” day for cancer awareness in SL, I just don’t see the point. People probably going to argue with me and thats ok, it’s just my opinion. I’d like to see all the people who truly believe in marriage for gays/lesbians and people who oppose Prop 8 to give a dollar to the opposition campaigns or give a dollar to pro-gay causes, as I think that would be a more tangible way to support. I hope that anyone reading this who disagrees will keep in mind that I do support gay causes and am willing to stand up and throw my support in through votes, physical help or monetary donations, but I don’t think a snapshot of my pixel person is going to help anyone.

EDIT: Yeah it’s totally possible to support the cause through money or protest or voting and still do the NoH8 picture, of course. I’m just saying my opinion and my reason for not doing it.

(Yet another) blogger challenge over on SCD. Dump out the contents of your bag, don’t clean it up and list all the stuff with bullet points.

OK, this is messy! I don’t carry a purse but a laptop bag (without laptop, actually my laptop is too big to fit :(  , it has its own, even gianter bag.)

• Bag with initial dangle, J. You’ll notice that I guess I have a fetish for dangles, theres one on like, everything.
• Checkbook with assorted reciepts
• Hand santizer (germophobe), lotion, couple inhalers (huffer), excedrin in nondescript bottle
• Gums, fruit, watermelon, pomegranate, cinnamon and some super sour Japanese lemon gummys. yeah, I don’t know why either.
• Zune with custom case I made (with dangle)
• cell phone with favoritest pen ever, it’s Kuromi (also with dangle)  XD and my squeezy monkey. would you like to squeeze my monkey?
• Keys with minimal keyrings and brass knuckles (yeah again, I dunno)
• Makeup, omg. I don’t even wear much makeup these days, but I guess I’m prepared. two glosses, two lipsticks and one lip stain, eyeshadow, base, mascara, eyeliner, powder brush, mirror. also that pink bag is where the girls’ necessities stay.
• Prescription sunglasses (Rayban) in case. Fun fact about me, I’ll wear clothes from Target and shoes from Payless, but my eyeglasses are always designer.
• Wallet with monies and cards and ID
• also about $10 US in loose change XD
• ALSO, I realized after I took it that one pocket was left unemptied, that contains a pack of clove ciggies. which I smoke so seldom that I kind of forget about them, but they do make my purse smell nice and clovey.

I’ll be finishing up the “dress me up” challenges soon, I wanted to space them out a bit.