and I bent for your love right through the sun, shoeing the bones for everyone

The Nostalgia Chick reviews Hercules, and introduces her drinking game! And Hercules is the perfect film for it. (Trust me--if you've never seen her work before, it's twelve minutes well spent.)

Other bloggers are weighing in on the whole 'death of the phone call' debate. For me, personally, I'll take a phone call (or voice) if I have no other way to deal with the person; my preference, how'ver, has always been text. From writing long letters by hand to texting and chatting in typed strands in IRC and SL, I tilt towards the written over the spoken word.

Am I ashamed of my voice? Not at all (though it's far easier to baffle people with my lack of logic in voice, than in text--and it happens plenty often enough in text!). And it's not a "privacy" issue, per se. (Hells, the local loved ones with hear more from me via emails and Gchat missives than they hear from me vocally, and they live with me

The dates for Hair Fair 2010 have been announced--it will run from the 4th to the 19th of September, and this year proceeds and donations will go towards Wigs for Kids.

The subscribe-o-matic that was set up for Hair Fair 2008, which transferred over to Hair Fair 2009, they had a problem with transferring for this year--so, they recommend instead that you go to The Deck or TenFifteen to sign up again.

(Just a tip, TenFifteen is also the home of Savoir Hair.)

There apparently is a 'secret' Hair Fair admirer that is providing not only the four sims for running Hair Fair, but building all booths and site decorations as well. Please, please please please, let them not adore cupcakes and frosting...

In the world of animations, there's not a lot of renaming that goes on. Sometimes this is due to the animations themselves being no-mod. But more usually, we just don't have the time--if we make animations, if we use animations, it's easier to just shove them into an approximately-relevant folder and use them at need.

But there's been some talk of late about "pirated" animations. There's a list, in fact, which covers them. (I don't think this is all of them, but it's a good start.) Here's what's currently on that list:

Parsalin Gullwing no longer exists in SL. No idea when they left, but these animations are attributed to them:

69_F : Parsalin Gullwing
69_M : Parsalin Gullwing
BJ_F : Parsalin Gullwing
BJ_M : Parsalin Gullwing
Chair_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Chair_M : Parsalin Gullwing
Doggy_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Doggy_M : Parsalin Gullwing
Ground_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Ground_M : Parsalin Gullwing
lay : Parsalin Gullwing
Missionary_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Ride_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Ride_M : Parsalin Gullwing
RideB_F : Parsalin Gullwing
RideB_M : Parsalin Gullwing
RideB : Parsalin Gullwing
Table_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Table_M : Parsalin Gullwing
tastee : Parsalin Gullwing
taster : Parsalin Gullwing
Wall_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Wall_M : Parsalin Gullwing
Wall2_F : Parsalin Gullwing
Wall2_M : Parsalin Gullwing

If you have any of these, you might have pirated animations; it's hard to tell at this distance. (I had a whole mess of them, but six months back, before I got the notecard, I deleted all my 'freebie sex anims' folders to save space.)

Craig Altman has been in Second Life since mid-November, 2004. He owns Bits and Bobs Animations, and a lot of his animations are being sold--still--or given away--still--without his consent.

couchfidget 1 : Craig Altman
couchlay2 f2 : Craig Altman
cpose3v4 f : Craig Altman
cpose3v4 m : Craig Altman
fcouch lay1priority4red : Craig Altman
LS 2 static F : Craig Altman
LS 2 static M : Craig Altman
sit on ground F v2 retime 90 F : Craig Altman
sit on ground m retime 90 M pr2 : Craig Altman

If you have any of these, you do have pirated animations; he sells no-transfer animations for general public use, then--for building use--he has a L$1000 class of various animations that are sold full-perm. (When I searched my inventory, I had couchfidget 1 Priority 4, and something called fidget2lowpriority--I've had them since 2007, but I deleted them both. I also had LS 2 static F and LS 2 static M tucked away in a bondage poses folder, along with sit on ground F v2 retime 90 F and sit on ground m retime 90 M pr2; I deleted those. I do have a poseball that's named Pose couchlay2 f2, but 1) I paid Altman for it and 2) it's no-copy and no-mod, as it should be.)

Nytemyst Grace has been kicking around SL since May of 2004. She's had a photography studio open for use nearly since she joined the grid; I actually used to freelance part of a photography out of that studio, since it was a lovely set-up in a lovely location. She's sold furniture with poses (but never the poses themselves), along with scripts to help poseballs work; now she sells eyes, furnishings, and ephemera in Epirrita.

flay18 : Nytemyst Grace
flay6 : Nytemyst Grace
lay16h : Nytemyst Grace
lovefemale14 : Nytemyst Grace
lovefemale20b : Nytemyst Grace
lovermale14 : Nytemyst Grace
lovermale20 : Nytemyst Grace

If you have any of these, you definitely have pirated animations; she does not now, and did not in the past, sell poses to the general public for building. (In my inventory I found flay18, flay6, lay16h, lovefemale14 and lovermale 14, lovefemale20b and lovermale20--all in the same folder! Found in a full-perm dollarbie cuddle rug I picked up on XStreet sometime around 2008. They're all deleted now.)

Johan Durant's been kicking around since 2006. He sells mostly couples' animation sets through the Motion Merchant.

ground_kiss_f : Johan Durant
ground_kiss_m : Johan Durant
laying_arm_across_f : Johan Durant
laying_arm_across_m : Johan Durant
laying_makeout_f : Johan Durant
laying_makeout_m : Johan Durant
laying_neck_kiss_f : Johan Durant
laying_neck_kiss_m : Johan Durant
laying_pinned_f : Johan Durant
laying_pinned_kiss_f : Johan Durant
laying_pinned_kiss_m : Johan Durant
laying_pinned_m : Johan Durant
laying_pinned_m : Johan Durant
laying_propped_arm_f : Johan Durant
laying_propped_arm_m : Johan Durant
laying_side_side_f : Johan Durant
laying_side_side_m : Johan Durant
laying_spoon_f : Johan Durant
laying_spoon_m : Johan Durant

If you have any of these animations, you have pirated animations. (And all of these? I had in my bondage poses folder. They're all deleted now, and it's making me want to track down the avatars who made the other poses in that folder, since so many of them showed up there...This was handed to me by an avatar who's since left the grid, and I'm sure it was handed to her by someone else in turn.)

This is pervasive, and insidious. How can we stop copying the world we see, by making avatars, clothing and items from books, music, movies and games? How can we know absolutely where something came from, and whether it's a knock-off or an original? EVERYONE DOES THIS. I mean it--absolutely EVERYONE. And it's not stopping--just this last week, I have been in places that had tribute items for the movie Avatar, Alice in Wonderland (three separate versions), Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and BladeRunner. And it gets even more confusing because some people are doing tributes which have different names, some are just straight ripping off other forms of media and some makers are getting permission. But we don't know who off the bat is doing what.

It's becoming a very scary Second Life, people.

Taken from the Twitter Irony Files:

@iappANZ_Privacy Google has suspended sale of certain apps after it was revealed this wk that it collects mobile ph[one] users' personal data.

Oh, the irony, it burrrrrns...Because really, Google is saying this. Google, that tracks who I write to on Gmail, what I write about on Blogger, what I search for, where I go on the web...GOOGLE is now WORRIED about how my personal data is being used...by someone else.

Yeah, because then you wouldn't have it all to yourselves. Gosh. I feel for you.

In other news, Conan O'Brien is going to start a new late-night show...on TBS. "In three months I’ve gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I’m headed to basic cable. My plan is working perfectly." It should be--he just sold his Manhattan apartment for twenty-five million.

In other news of the world at large, Roger Ebert references the West Memphis Three in a review of the documentary "Cropsey". Both Rand and Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley did not commit the crimes of which they've been accused--but does the world care? The answer, depressingly, is still no.

The Sad Keanu meme strikes again--scroll down to the second image.

MyWorld has a nickname now--Placebook. I don't think that helps...

And there's a survey crawling over the internet on how Christian boys think women should dress. Good gods, they must think Second Life is a cesspool of lust and venality. (Well...only if you're at the fun parties...)

I'm still taking "Fast, Easy and Fun" as a sign of the End of Days. But I'm a doomsayer nearly by orientation. I may be wrong.

And staying with SL, a really excellent essay on missing inventory, and why it's going buggy in the first place.

[0:21] DaddyDeath Minotaur: i gotta pee where is the nearest shemale bathroom
[0:21] DaddyDeath Minotaur: please tell me

Some things on SL, you can't make up--they're just that odd. This is one of them.

Finally, how does Twitter pay for itself, anyway? We're not really sure. But Ebert has some fascinating points for reflection.