you'll never hear the message I give

Explore the world of reverse graffiti. Basically, instead of arming themselves with cans of spray pain and stencils, street artists are turning the tables and instead, removing accumulated dirt, smog, mold, whatever, to reveal artistically-arranged clean surfaces. Personally, I'm among those who think that graffiti, executed with style and grace, is as much of an art form as anything hanging in art galleries, but this particular form goes that one step further into actual restoration, which I find very intriguing.

In more baffling news, Dr. Pepper thought it would be a great idea for people to invent their own catchphrase T-shirts--the end assumption is that consumers will create branded shirts they want to wear, and will be overjoyed to pay $15 per shirt to buy them.

This...didn't work out exactly as planned:

• "I'm A...banana!"
• "I'm A...bit tired of Dr. Pepper"
• "I'm A...-dverse to drinking Dr. Pepper"
• "I'm A...-ctually not a fan of Dr. Pepper"
• "I'm A...diabetic thanks to Dr. Pepper"

Some enterprising young idiot discovered symbols could be used on the shirts--you can imagine how well that went. And more than one person discovered "curse words" weren't allowed--but apparently (or at least, according to Dr. Pepper), that also includes Coca Cola (but mysteriously, not any other soft drink brand names).

Someone else discovered that while "corporate whore" hits their profanity filters, "lemon stealing whore" does not, so Dr. Pepper's standards are bizarre, to say the least.

And two shirts already bought and delivered--one says "I'm a Mr. Pibb drinker", and the other one says "I'm a Holocaust denier!". Wau. Just wau.

Someone else had the same text problem on CoolVL that I had! They even tossed up a picture so Henri Beauchamp can see exactly what's going on. After (likely minimal) evaluation of the problem, Beauchamp's answer was to blame the graphics card, with the suggestion to revert to an earlier driver--or to buy a new NVidia card, instead.

Here's my problem with that: if the only viewer I have this issue with is CoolVL, and no other viewer (including SL's official Viewer 3) has this invisible text issue...why would I revert to an earlier driver set? I can just choose not to use Beauchamp's buggy viewer.

I was given an entirely new reason not to go back when I first logged in on Catznip, also: because inexplicably, I was suddenly wearing three complete outfits--three wigs, three skirts, three pairs of shoes, three pairs of prim eyes--et cetera. It look me fifteen minutes of hitting "Detach all" and "Take off all clothing" before finally, everything (from six DIFFERENT outfit folders, even!) was off, and I could start with new hair, new outfit and new eyes.

I think this was CoolVL's death knell for me. Between the utter lack of end user support and the bugs in the code inherent to Beauchamp's code build, plus the fact that getting him to implement new features he didn't personally use himself--whether or not they were in the official SL viewer code--was nigh impossible, even if the requests came from a male...I don't see any reason to continue to use the Cool VL Viewer.

Other news. I don't, as a rule, give much thought to Prokovy Neva, but last week I was trying to track down more on Oskar Linden's departure from LL, and ran across this. What I find most compelling is this passage, near the end of the entry:

[23:20] Axxxxx Wxxxxxxx: I went ahead and picked up my belongings... and got my 329L back. Thank you for that. Also, just so you are aware... I do plan to write up an entire blog posting on a very popular SL blog about your exceptional customer service, urging all of my friends and blog followers (there is a lot...) to rent from you and to spread the word. In addition I will make sure all of my friends post on their SL Facebooks and Plurks about how everyone should rent from your land. You're welcome. :)

BTW, if you can't tell what sarcasm is... that was my way of letting you know, I'm going to be sure the word gets out about how fucking unprofessional and rude you are.... among a few other things I'll add. Good luck with all your nookie tenants. LOL

So, I punched in her name on a general blog search and found this. It's fairly self-explanatory, but I'd like to point out two distinct--but I think, personally, related--things:

1. The woman relating this tale of woe in quotes goes by "αℓℓι вяєєη cυℓℓєη".
2. The woman posting this tale of woe on behalf of Miss "cυℓℓєη" is going by (at least on the blog) "Fαšhï♡ηʍαdεƐαšψ".

I'm thinking I have a developing prejudice that is slowly settling into hard and obdurate place: that of substantially revising the intelligence level downward of anyone who uses Unicode characters in place of an actual name, who doesn't actually need those characters to spell OUT the name in question.

Well, that and continuing the prejudicial conception of idiots who want to be part of the Cullen family. Because those were abysmal, poorly written books, that were then turned into abysmal, poorly-scripted, poorly-filmed, poorly-plotted movies.

But also, this seems like prime self-delusion on steroids, on the part of Miss "cυℓℓєη". Like or loathe Neva, I'm not seeing anything particularly wrong in what was said in the first place. While it was blunt, it was not disrespectful, and had the codicil that if nothing truly was going wrong, then the cautions didn't apply.

And, as leery as I am about naming what is and isn't a child avatar, even I look at this and see a damaged--and possibly sexualized--child-height figure, if nothing else.

Running down her profile, there's a comment that terms Miss Ordinary an "aunt" of some sort, and she also has a shop offering what seems like quality fantasy (and seaside) prefabs, so...a case could be made that she's not normally the size of an adolescent. I will firmly and without hesitation raise my hand to support short people in SL; we are frequently accosted if we're under six feet as being pedophiles, perverts, or outright evil; and gods help those of us who go out actually in child forms--even if we ourselves keep ourselves restricted solely to PG zones.

But that having been said, if we take the image solely as the image--that is, if we discount what we may know about her business, her friends, and her personal RL age (let alone her SL age, which puts her clearly in the 2009 decantees)--then we have an avatar who looks very much like a child with artificially puffy lips, clawed feet, spattered in blood, wearing a severed hand. With more blood streaking her hair and clothing.

I'm all for keeping the spirit of the season--in this case, Samhain--alive all year; I have on frequent occasion set out onto the grid in some terrifying form or other, simply because I feel like creeping people out that day. How'ver, while I might be short when doing so, there is never a chance where I am presenting myself as a psychotic schoolgirl murderer, or...whatever the blood layers were supposed to indicate in Miss Ordinary's case.

Given the same information as Mm. Neva had, and valuing people who can obey my estate's covenant over just anyone who can pay the rent, I might have done exactly the same thing, and came to the same conclusion regarding both Miss Ordinary's outfit, and what may have been going on to cause the neighbor's complaint in the first place.

The one thing I find morbidly ironic in all of this? The fact that Miss "cυℓℓєη" told Neva, outright, that she was going to publish an account of these terrible misdeeds on a "very popular SL blog". Yet not only have I never heard of that blog, there are only four comments to that entry--and one of them is from the group owner.

Sure, Miss "cυℓℓєη", winning the popularity contest there...you may well have induced two turtles and a piece of dryer lint to never rent from Neva again, but...I doubt you influenced anyone else.