cómo se puede bailar, es un escándalo

Received this from someone on Discord, who had originally DMed me out of the blue asking to be "friends"...and then followed that up with constant server invites to his own server, where apparently he's "God". I finally just asked him what he was here for, becoming my friend, or just seeking new fish to swim into his server?

That's what I got back. The capitals make it extra-important, I guess.

And two different requests for aid: first, the maker behind Pirocious recently rescued a Husky, and he has a shattered leg. She'd like to ask for help in getting (the absolutely gorgeous, there are pictures) Ghost back up on his feet. Here's how directly, or you could just go to the store--she's having a store-wide sale on everything she's made so far, and if you like things cute and spooky? This is where you need to start.

And, from the brand Debauchery comes this:

"I have received some medical news that requires me to need to spend a sudden and surprising amount of money.

So, if you can, please try to come find some things to buy to help support Debauchery and me.

If you can donate, anything you can give will be greatly appreciated. I've set up donation boxes at the store and around Maui.

I hate to ask, but I really need help.

Bandor"

For those who don't know, he's one of the makers of adult furniture on the grid that's decided more is definitely better? So most of his pieces are integrated with Lovense, various adult bits brands, I'm not going to say for sure INM, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that locked into any of his showers or hot tubs--and he runs not only the Debauchery store, but the Maui Swingers' Resort in the next sim over. (I don't attend normally, because most of the days I think I may want to wander in for a Mai Tai I have fur, and it's a human-only place? Store's not, though. Store you can show up as anything, and I've never had a problem shopping as a cat.)

(I should probably also say that both Debauchery, the store, and the Maui resort, are both strongly adult places, and in both of them you can frequently find folks au naturale, so...I guess they're NSFW, basically.)

But, above and beyond that, I have had the absolute worst day, so...time to check out an old favorite.



Wait. Is this the same place?



I mean, the big pumpkin guy's here, but...nothing else seems to match...



Well, the interior's largely the same.



And Madam Leota's there still.



All in all, the haunt has seen better days, at least on the outside? And some of that's entirely possible SL's current fun party trick of not rezzing things in on sims is to blame. At the end of the day, though, it accomplished what it needed to--calming me down. What more can I really ask for from a haunt?

it's the final busdown

From a letter I sent a friend explaining why I've spent the past seven days glued to an internet charity stream:

"We are in the last hour, formally declared, they are accepting no more bids, so they WILL end in another hour.

"Their total this year, btw?  Barring further merch sales, which from here will only be counted if it's merchandise specifically listed in support of Desert Bus, their total was $976,532.

Since writing that, by the way, ten minutes ago? Their total is now $977,938 for the year.

"To put that into perspective, in 2018 they raised $730,099.90, for 160 hours of fundraising, and in 2019, they made over 876K, buying 162 hours, and they were absolutely wrung out and weaving on their pins for that.

"*No one* expected that this year, the year they had to go virtual, and broadcast mainly from personal homes instead of being all in the same place, to raise this much. And I'm still astounded at another accomplishment, which they're not really fully considering: they took an event that is rigged totally to film, in several angles, one gathering room for performers during the run, and managed to hook up an insane variety of webcams, internet plans, data transfer and computer systems, to allow for the broadcast of both LRR performers in Canada, and special guests and additional volunteers worldwide, for seven days. And while yes, there were technical glitches, and signal shorts, and dropped signals, and problems with sound....they weren't using a system that had been in place for years prior. This was all new, begun in July or August, I believe, to get ready for the November event.

"So I'll be up from now, until they formally crash the bus, which is how they end the run every year, in about an hour, and then I'll go back to bed, reeling that this year has been so strange, so wonderful, and so bizarrely successful for the charity."

I was sure that I'd mentioned this more recently than 2013, but no, apparently that's the last time I spoke of it on the blog (with a mention before that one year earlier, and the first time I brought it up being all the way back in 2011). My Twitter feed largely tilts to Desert Bus mentions, and--barring the last two years, when I was boycotting Tumblr for the stupidity of their ban on adult content--my Tumblog is largely tilted to Desert bus mentions in November.

And I can't count the number of people I've told in Second Life about the charity, and how phenomenal I think it is. Because it really is. They've gone from a handful of people getting together in the basement of a friend's house, hoping to raise $10,000 for Child's Play, to now, I think fourteen years later? Where they've raised over seven million dollars lifetime in support of sick kids trapped in long-term care in hospitals.

Because that's all this is. That's all Child's Play does as a charity--they exist solely to help children get through one of the hardest experiences in any adult life, that they have to handle as children. And I'm so proud that they do.

This year brought us so many amazing things, but I'm only going to link a few that really stood out.

Graham Stark of Loading Ready Run explains what Desert Bus stands for.
The first intro, six days ago, for this year's Cloud Bus broadcast.
Jacob Burgess and others discuss how different this year feels.
Five days ago, Danny calls in, whose wish through the Make-a-Wish Foundation collapsed us all, because all he wanted to do with his was donate to other kids in need.
Alpha Flight's very 80s intro (the beginning of Alpha Flight was good, too, but that iteration was my favorite for the year).
Jacob Burgess wears the Very Nice Coat.
Alpha Flight's raccoon outro video.
The return of Teen Girls on the Street!
The first Night Watch News intro for the year, which introduced the Horrifying Eggplant.
Playing the Solo movie trailer but with the Star Wars Kinect dance-off music from the game. (For those who don't know, the Star Wars Kinect game had a dance mini-game, which was pretty much the goofiest thing ever, and Han Solo took part.)
Horrifying fun with Snapchat filters, featuring Graham, Jordan, Matt, Ian, and the cursed croissant himself, Ben.
The Smack Barm Pea Wet sandwich explanation, Part I and Part II.
The reading of 'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom', which eventually brought us Belopa, and a few days later, Laser Malena-Webber of the Doubleclicks' song tribute to Belopa.
Six days ago, Zeta's first shift.
Cam and Cori explain Blaseball.
Ashton has "fun" with Snapchat filters, and chat does not approve.
The worst Dump Truck ever: Trasure X Aliens edition.
Jacob Burgess names his appliances.
Danny's second appearance on the DB stream.
The return of Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa (first introduced at DB2019).
Reading of 'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom', featuring Belopa. (See also: the attack of the Fish with Faces.)
Beej reads auction descriptions after deliberately blurring his vision.
Second day of Zeta shift, and Cam is not prepared.
Jacob gives unrevokable permission for Zeta shift to eat anything he's made in Studio C.
Jacob's fantastic stretching advice.
The Garages perform live.
Discussing Belopa.
Alpha Flight outro part three: The Moose.
The Garages make a song for Jacob, "Eat the Bread".
Day Three Nightwatch News, Ben Drives edition.
Engineering starts a contest for the Shrine to Belopa.
Timothy Dalton reacts to one of the Auspicious Fish praising Belopa.
Rosewatta card readings.
The amazing live auction for the Star Trek prop replicas.
Jacob tells Zeta: Eat the Bread. (Bonus "Eat the Bread" video.)
Rosewatta card readings part II.
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom' reading, day three.
Art Challenge entries for the Shrine of Belopa.
Cori becomes Gritty.
Dawn Guard intro, Hologram edition.
Mikey Neumann tells an Alan Rickman story.

Dawn Guard reads Rosewatta Stone cards.
Kathleen tries to explain Belopa.
Adventures in Snorsh tourism.
Alpha Flight outro: the Kangaroo.
Day Four of Night Watch News: Ben starts to slip.
Escape from the Sea Kingdom part IV.
Jennifer Belopez and Zeta Shift intro day four.
"Wheej" readds giveaway descriptions wearing a shirt over his head.
Failed art restorations.
Who are Maddy and Andy (DB2020 edition). (Bonus points for Andy singing Ride With Us.)

Andy reads the first recorded customer complaint.
Canadian mascots and the horror of Mr. Blobby.
Alpha Flight outro part five: the Manitoba Testicle Viper.
Night Watch News, the arrival of Benhattan.
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom', part five.
Night Watch outro day five.
All is Belopa.
Alpha Flight intro day six.
The room reacts to baby Andy performing the Papers Please skit.
Jacob tells a story about his time in Poland.
Andy sings Tucson or Bust.
QWERPline: Quantum Distancing.
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom' part six.
Beej sings 'When I Fall' from the Barenaked Ladies.
Last Alpha Flight intro.
Alpha Flight last outro: the Orca.
The final broadcast of Night Watch News, AKA "Is everything drugs"?
Ben sings This Year by the Mountain Goats
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom' part seven.
The terrifying beginning of Omega shift.
Omega shares a video of why volunteers think Desert Bus is so important and chat breaks down.
The Sun returns to say hello to an auspicious fish.
Starting the final hour with Engineering playing with overlays.
The Final Busdown with all vocals out of synch).

Wau, that took way longer than I thought it would. Wanna know the really scary thing? This really is a short list--take seven full days times twenty-four and then put together a video strike team of 56 people to capture every moment into short videos to post to YouTube, and trust me--there's far more content up, for this year alone.

But that's Desert Bus, closed for another year. We'll see you--in some version--in 2021. Chat out.

I rode a lion to town, use a rattlesnake whip

(This poster of Olivia Wilde was drawn by Shephard Fairey for the ACLU fundraising campaign of the same name.)

Ran across this image and the following passage, reproduced below, on someone's profile.

"Most Americans want a great, kind and strong democracy. We got lazy - we got fussy. Not enough voted. Not enough acted.

"Get active. Pick any good cause, this is one of mine. Planned Parenthood. Or send some candy hearts to the Badlands National Park Service! Anything, small or large. Get together and organize!

"A catastrophe for America and the world is unfolding and we must stop it. Get in with love, and get to work.

And look, cynicism as a response to everything is an immature person's idea of sophistication, and a small-minded habit of otherwise smart people. It's cheap. It's easy. It's BORING. It demoralizes the people we most need. Hawk that dollar store plastic cutlery set elsewhere."

I felt it needed to be said. I'll also add this, and urge anyone who has the funds and a desire to help to send help - financial preferred, but even notes of support are tangible things--to one or more of the organizations listed in that article, to help the affected in Charlottesville.

Fight against the darkness. There are things you can do. Do them.

but that's okay, because I know you'll eat the cultists like me first

Etienne Meneau has released a wine carafe shaped like oversized blood vessels. I'm impressed that each one holds a full-sized (750mL) bottle.

Wonder how it looks with rosé...

Oh, and Desert Bus for Hope 7 has launched! If you don't know anything about the craziness that is Desert Bus, here's a brief explanation: the cast of Loading Ready Run, in cooperation with the Child's Play charity, gets together members and friends to stay up as much as they can while playing the worst video game in existence. (There's no question on this; Desert Bus is universally acknowledged as the worst game to play, ever, mostly because it takes place in real time--to drive the bus for an hour of game time means you're driving the bus for one hour real time. And to gain one point, you have to drive to Tuscon from Las Vegas and back. Which takes twenty-four hours.) They also do skits, sing songs, and try to keep each other awake, and they broadcast all of this live. People watching can chime in with comments on live chat, suggestions of what to do, and make challenges--where they offer payment towards Child's Play if their challenge is completed on the air.


How'ver, I want to talk a bit about the LoveFest, the LoveCraft Festival, which this year benefits autism awareness. I will freely and openly acknowledge that I signed up to help with a build, and with the festival itself, and then got sick and basically flaked for two weeks prior to opening.


In fact, I was thinking seriously of just apologizing to the organizers, and withdrawing, but a random impulse saw me on the reserved plot, and once there, well, I had to do what I could.


While I don't normally identify people by name anymore, I have to give my great and humble thanks to Felice Nightfire, Sphynx Soleil, and mbeatrix, who helped me decorate, sink the land underneath the build for the basement level, and generally kept me going until it was done.


Without your help, gentle souls, trust me--the Shunned House build would not have seen the light of day.

And with that, I should tell you tomorrow is the last day of the festival, so hurry down!

It's an amazing set of builds, and a great group of vendors, and it benefits a wonderful charity.

Help if you can but do try to wander at least, because...it's very much in the spirit of Lovecraft.

and I dream of the sky, my utopian lie

A friend passed me something I figured might be good to toss to a wider audience:

Rules and Guidelines for the Inkstained Clanks

Welcome to the fan fiction writing group for the brilliant Girl Genius universe. We are a collection of like-minded individuals who enjoy writing and gathering together in order to write and share original fan fiction stories, sonnets, haikus, and prose. We are currently working on creating a website to post the masterpieces that our members create. Each person will have their own log in and their own page, and that way they will be able to maintain their own collection of their talent. For now, however, we will be meeting once a week in order to share our stories, read them out loud if the members wish it, as well as to help each other by giving constructive criticism, praise, and whatever other help our members may need. In order to keep order and to stay on the same page, we have put together a few rules for our members.

Every Sunday a theme will be issued. A theme is sent out in order to motivate and challenge our members to write using a certain theme, be it a situation, topic, type of monster, etc. Suggestions for themes will be accepted but the ultimate decision will rest with the owners of the group.

Every week we will have a meeting where we can help each other write, give praise, constructive criticism, etc. These stories will be G, PG, and R rated, although there will be no explicit sexual or violent scenes. There can be vague or general sorts of situations but nothing offensive or explicit. Which leads us to rule number 3.

Once a month there will be meeting for Adult fan fiction, where we will be reading, writing, giving constructive criticism, praise, and any other comments to fan fiction that can be rated anywhere from G to XXX. We will let everyone know well in advance when the adult meeting will be, so that those who do not care to attend can steer well clear of it. When we get the website online, the adult writings will have their own section so it will be kept away from the rest of the creations.

No Drama. We are adults and surely we can pretend to get along with everyone. We are writers, creators, surely we can act civilized. If you are having problems with someone and cannot reconcile it with them by yourself, please contact Kira Vedrina (Kiralette Kelley). She is the ultimate power of Clank or Crush in the group and will be happy to try to find a way to create peacefulness. Peace enables people to be more creative, and we all want to let those creative juices flowing, right?

No maligning Girl Genius, the creators of Girl Genius, or anyone who is involved in the creative process that goes into the existence of Girl Genius. If it weren't for them, we would not be here making our own creations using theirs as an inspiration.

While it's also nice to know that Miss Kiralette is still alive and kicking, what I would mention to people is that no writing group, no matter the goal, is ever a waste of time. Fan writing in particular--while it can, and usually does, exist in a legal hinterland that occasionally becomes dangerous terrain indeed, what people tend to forget is that it's still writing. Anything that gets us writing, consistently; thinking of characterization and plot; and developing writing routines is never wasted time.

Just search for "Inkstained Clanks" under Groups; they pop right up, and they're a free group to join.

[10:21 PM] Geoffrey Xenobuilder: by the way who ever's Refrigerator is running laps thru Central Caledon Can you collect it before it eats one of the pepole looking at parcels

Never a bad idea.

Unfortunately, this one was:

[00:18] Cxxxx Nxxxxxxx: Well, the fundraiser to help Aeva/Heartsick owner Amesha get a new computer started-only problem is that the sim owner went to bed without opening the sim to the public.

Nrrrrrng.

As I wasn't on the "official" bloggers' list for the Heartsick event (they didn't turn me down, I didn't apply because my scattered brain is having a hard enough time keeping up with blogging just for me), I don't know whether or not the bloggers that were got early access. I'd suggest just keep trying until the event opens--hopefully, when the sim owner wakes up in the morning.

[Update before publishing: it's been fixed! It's now open, so go and support your brains out. There's a lot of great things donated for the event from a lot of great designers, so yay for simple fixes.]

[[Postscript: having now--very briefly--wandered the sim, I'm also amused that the unofficial theme of the affair seems to be Twi'leks. Hee.]]

I'm begging you, please wake me up--in all my dreams I...

This preempts anything else I had planned, 'cos it's kind of that important. From Dare Munro:

The bad news:

My little beast of a computer has finally given it up - it has died on the table several times now and is barely functional.

The good news:

So, on that note, I am announcing the 'Dare Needs a New Computer' sale!

In order to keep running SL and keep doing what I do, the little beast (now 5 years old) MUST be replaced. So I am having a sale for the next few weeks - every few days I will add a room to the sale (as I am able) with hundreds more outfits and more all on sale for 199L (or less). One whole room is ready to go now with almost 100 designs in every color.

Here

In other news - this computer crisis has left me WAY behind in filling gift card orders, but if you have one pending or know someone who does - rest assured they will all be filled as I am doing a few a day as long as the computer holds out.

Cross your fingers for me - I hope to be back at full capacity very soon.

yours faithfully,
- Dare :)

(from the events album)

So what does this mean? Well, first and foremost: SALE AT DARE. Which, like, rarely happens.

But more than that, I know this pain. I wouldn't have the nifty computer I'm typing from now had a dear friend not come through for me. When computers die, they tend to die hard, and if your business is mostly (or even entirely) virtual, this is a BIG problem.

(from the events album)

Dare's not the only one this is happening to, either. Amesha Jewell, the mind behind Aeva/Heartsick, had her computer die a horribly painful death. So friends of hers are organizing a fundraiser, first couple weeks of May.

(from the events album)

I know, I know, timing. We all just spent our hearts out supporting Fantasy Faire. But these are also important issues--and issues that, if not solved, will result in one or both makers losing their livelihood, if not their sims. And that's too great a sacrifice when for around a grand US, you can get a pretty functional machine with some bells and whistles to help out along the way.

(from the events album)

Help if you can, appreciate the art of creation doesn't matter if the medium of creation has evaporated, and spread the word.

(Worn: Heartsick's "Enchant/Illusion" skin gift from a few years back, in Very Berry; Curious Kitties' "Honeybee" eyes from a spring festival last year, I believe; Alice Project's "Delirium" hair in Red/Black from the last Twisted hunt [gacha prize for this color, I think\; and Dare Designs' "Apparition" outfit in Violet from the new sale [but remember, go to the link above for the special sale room]. All shots taken in Evensong Woods, the last hour or so it exists on the grid.)