The not-a-review of the 'Aza Emperia' Celestial Codex

[12:45] Azraiel DeZad (azraiel134): The impasse of undeath

Mood.

Got a notice from the event group today that Enchantment is still open--I'd forgotten they closed on June third. Gives me a bit of chance to figure out a reason to spend more than I really should on a few outfits.

How'ver, that's not why I bring it up.



I cannot, in good conscience, justify pulling this set to review. It's just too gorgeous, and I will not do it justice. What I will say is, interested netizens can find both the Celestial Codex, and the AO specially designed for it, at Enchantment until the event closes. The "Aza Emperia" Codex will run you L$500, and the "Aten Ka Celestial Animation Override" HUD will cost L$700. (Both from /Vae Victis\, naturally.) And those prices will only go up from here, so keep that in mind.

Still not why I bring it up. This is: I have pulled the "Revenant" Animation Override that just launched at the Warehouse event.



Yes, I know, it's not a smooth looping animation, it was just a short few-seconds capture. For smooth looping, you have to go to Grim's demonstration:



This is going to be a challenge to blog, but I think I can do it. It's far subtler than my zombie/haunt Frankencobble AO I've worked with for a while. I think I like it, though. A light air of dread...like the scent of dead roses in a graveyard. Pleasant, but unnerving.

Also, that thing behind the glass seen in the choppy gif? That's Xiu.



Yes, she is a chonk. (Me for size comparison, and yes, she outgrew me by day five.

Anyway, this one's an even better deal than the Celestial AO, at L$630. Find it at what I'm starting to think of as /Vae Victis\' permanent location at the Warehouse.

So I'll get to that in a couple days!

In the meantime, since I've managed to come down with something and I have reached the fever stage beyond the screen...I'm gonna go lie down for a bit.

last night I cried about you, tonight I find I'm crying too

give me a drink 'cause I'm starting to think that I'm broken
got no confession but still my reflection provokes it
I hold the gavel and judgements unravel for who I've been...

(This is going to be a hard one. Feel free to skip past it if you're not in an equable place.)

feeling the weight of the all
medicating the turbulence

Studious observers of the blog will remember that, while things from beyond this blog's specific focii creep in from time to time, I try not to let it?

This one's...all RL.

the mask in the mirror is not getting clearer to comprehend
where do I begin?

This is Norma. She was between six and eight years old when we got her, and...there's a whole strange story behind this cat I can tell you, if you want, but my main point is...this is...this...was...our cat.

I'm at the waters edge
in my anxiousness
what does it mean
to be seen
without the need to defend--

left to myself in both sickness and health
I can't do it
skin deep interactions
distraction's the way to get through it--

Everything we've done has been with the goal of making sure she knows she's loved, she knows she can declare boundaries, she knows she can have nightmares and not fear getting hit. (I'll say this--from a hoarder house, and apparently a bad one, so yes, she was a cat with trauma.) Everything, to give her the will and the confidence to stand up for herself.

everyone tells me that I should be happy for where I've been
but selling and sharing the shell that I'm wearing is wearing thin
hoping to find and in time recognize my own reflection
where do I begin?

This was one of her normal sleep modes. Cuddling, 'talking' to us, wandering around...plonk into a soft thing. We worried at first, but it wasn't a neurological issue, she'd move after a bit. She just liked that forward head drop into soft.

never let anyone know that
underneath the surface
what a vulnerable, nervous child I am but--

And...this was the second to last shot of her, in the oxygen kennel, because she was unable to breathe on her own. She had wanted to show us she was okay, really, and had actually pushed to her feet, the first time since heart surgery...and got in the litterbox, trying to go...and...couldn't, because she hadn't eaten or drunk anything, even though it was nearby, for twenty hours. And she collapsed there, head hanging on the edge.

I'll see it again
at the water's edge
with no answers left
what does it mean
is it me
or just a stranger again...

She was suffering. She was not recovering. So...we made the decision to let her go, and..they gave her a mild sedative so she would breathe more slowly, and be able to be removed from oxygen. She was arranged on one of my partner's laps, wrapped up warm, while the vet tech explained that it would be just like going to sleep. She wouldn't feel anything, just sleepy.

We've been here before. We've developed a tendency of adopting older shelter cats, the ones most people look over, and unsurprisingly, a lot of these end up with problems. Some we've had for years. Xena, our cat before Norma, we had for...twenty-four months, until a savage bone cancer ate away half her skull and blinded her in one eye. There was no saving us; she was in whatever counts in cats for stage four.

The vet told us, when we asked if it was our fault, that there was literally no way to tell without access to an X-ray machine. Because she literally went from fine to "why is her skull spongy oh god" in seventy-two hours.

The tech inserted the needle in the arm tap for our cat, which was still on from surgery. Norma looked up at Ms. Neome, meowed once, and before the tech could even depress the needle...she was gone.

It was like...she'd been waiting to see at least one of us before she could go.

That was at...7:05 pm SLT, and...I think I need to wander off now. I don't know why I wrote this, and I'll probably regret it later, but...I just...I wanted to commemmorate, I suppose. Something of her strength. And how hard she fought not to give up.

We miss her so much.

(Song lyrics taken from The Classic Crime's The Water's Edge. Thank you, M, for sending it to me. And here's five things about grief no one really tells you, but that are true, nonetheless, for whatever help it gives.)

don't you want to go for a ride, just keep your hands inside

Found a fun new dance club. It's in Quandisha, at present--I know the owner's planning a rebuild, but I don't know if she's also going to move sims? But it's here for now.



I know because Violet Scrivener DJ's a music set there on Tuesday afternoons.



I don't know if it's going to change after the rebuild, but right now, there's a lovely see-through fish tank inset into the wall just past the front door.



The tones inside are warming, comfortable--the dance floor is ringed with deep-cushioned chairs and sofas, the bar is open-access with comfortable bar stools--it feels very much like an old, beloved pub.



And I swear, this guy could fit in in Caledon, he has the quirky spirit.



Yes, that is an iguana on his head. The iguana was very agile and able to stay on his hat during every spin and twist.



And I even got the Duke out on the dance floor! So I think it qualifies as a really neat place.

and a needing to let go of tidal pain

never got around to Hair Fair



never unpacked all the demos



barely made it through Hair Fair to look at all the offerings



missed the last several 25L Tuesdays out of impoverishment and lack of Lindens



summer has been very hard on the typist



management apologizes for blog-based inconveniences.

when the night falls, there is fire in the bungalow

So granted, there are some further verifications that apparently will be tested out later in the week, but at least as of this writing, Comcast seems to be throttling Netflix video streaming speeds. Which--considering everyone pays for Comcast service, so it's not a freebie, it's wholly an elective service--I'd say is pretty damned infuriating, too.

Also, Facebook's apparently implementing a new gender system. Instead of the more-or-less standard of this:

• Male
• Female

they've apparently done this:

• Agender
• Androgyne
• Androgynous
• Bigender
• Cis
• Cisgender
• Cis Female
• Cis Male
• Cis Man
• Cis Woman
• Cisgender Female
• Cisgender Male
• Cisgender Man
• Cisgender Woman
• Female to Male
• FTM
• Gender Fluid
• Gender Nonconforming
• Gender Questioning
• Gender Variant
• Genderqueer
• Intersex
• Male to Female
• MTF
• Neither
• Neutrois
• Non-binary
• Other
• Pangender
• Trans
• Trans*
• Trans Female
• Trans* Female
• Trans Male
• Trans* Male
• Trans Man
• Trans* Man
• Trans Person
• Trans* Person
• Trans Woman
• Trans* Woman
• Transfeminine
• Transgender
• Transgender Female
• Transgender Male
• Transgender Man
• Transgender Person
• Transgender Woman
• Transmasculine
• Transsexual
• Transsexual Female
• Transsexual Male
• Transsexual Man
• Transsexual Person
• Transsexual Woman
• Two-Spirit

No idea what the asterisk after "Trans" means, or why the separation; and I had to look up "Neutrois", and now that puzzles me, because "Agender" is already on the list. Still, it's...progress, maybe? Even if cumbersome progress.

The problem is--at least to me--that it doesn't seem embracing of various gender identities. It feels like Facebook's asking for more data; like they're actually being more invasive of personal privacy by implementing this. I'm sure activists will welcome this, but...I see it as further intrusion, not more inclusion.

But hey, I'm not on Facebook anyway, so I really have no dog in this fight.



There's also a part one, but trust me, part two's better.

An artist created a staircase and a loft bed out of two salvaged pianos; another artist, Ed Fairburn, creates art out of city street maps; former Who Companion Karen Gillan is front and center for one of the most disturbing movie posters I've seen in the last few years (plus, looks pretty darned cute bald at the end of that articled!); and New Zealand's Prime Minister is (fairly definitely) not a lizard man. The hell, New Zealand.

And that's about all I have for now! More weirdness when I find it. (It used to be, weirdness was hard to find. Now it's daily news. There's something wrong about that...)

you know that you were my collection, an addiction out of style

I never thought I'd be following any Twitter account labeled "hottestsingles", but after a friend recommended it to me, I realized I had to follow them. Here's part of why.

One of the earliest Tweets I've been able to find:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA INGESTING THE ROOT OF ABYSSAL KNOWLEDGE DREDGING THE CHITTERING DEPTHS READY TO SHOW YOU WHAT THEY'VE FOUND

From the same day:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, EMERGING FROM THE SECRET PLACES, ADJUSTING FACES, POPPING THEIR COLLARS, COMBING THEIR HAIR TO HIDE SECONDARY JAWS

Yes, like MOUNTENNUI, Dread Singles communicates solely in uppercase:

HOT SINGLES IN YOURE AREA, HUNGERING IN THE NIGHT, SHARPENING THEIR TEETH, OPENING FORBIDDEN DOORS, BAYING AS THE PACK FORMS

More:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, LIFTING THE DARK HEART OF MAN FROM A FORGOTTEN FURNACE, EYES BRIGHT WITH NEED, EVERY HAIR IN ITS PLACE

And more:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, SINGING WHILE THEY COUNT YOUR TEETH

And more:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, CONSECRATING THE DARK CORONATION, SITTING ON THEIR THRONES OF BLEEDING LIGHT, SHOWING YOU YOUR OWN HEART

And yet more:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, GIGGLING BEHIND THEIR HANDS, HANDS WITH FINGERS THAT SEEM TO BE FAR TOO LONG, FAR TOO LONG AND SHARP

And even more:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, KNOCKING TO BE LET IN, CROONING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, CLACKING THEIR FANGS, MEWLING WITH HUNGER

To be fair, there were a lot of Tweets sent out August 20th:

HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, SCRYING THE TOSS OF KNUCKLE BONES, PLUCKING THREADS FROM THE ETERNAL PATTERN, STEALING YOUR YET UNDREAMED DREAMS

I'll get back to this.

In the meantime, breakfast cereal teabags now exist. For...whatever reasons they needed to exist. I'm confused.

Also, you should know by now cats occur in three natural states: solid, liquid and plasma. Please keep this in mind. (There is some debate on whether a fourth state exists, that of "cute", but debate is, as ever, mixed on the topic.)

I highly doubt this Kickstarter will make their funding, and that's a very sad thing. Why? Because their technology, if it works, could revolutionize horror gaming. Well, gaming in general, but survival horror could get a lot more intense and challenging. Their proposal: biofeedback gaming. So you're not just holding a controller and pressing buttons, but your pulse rate and heart rate are being measured and fed back to the game. Your own stress stimuli will change how challenging the game is.

Think of that in the other direction, though, too--want to calm down? The same thing could help you do that. Hold a controller and jump in a nearly weightless environment while simple things change in the background. The more stressed you start out, the easier the game is, the more soothing the music is. All based on your body's feedback to the machine.

We're already in the future, people. Now we just need to learn to adapt.

lord, lord, that greed, it'll kill you

[21:39] Exxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: I got spooked from falling asleep at my keyboard to be told the obvious -yawn-
[21:40] mxxxxxx Axxxxx: Eggplant
[21:43] kxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: cheese

For some reason, this is relevant today.

Curious about where Lovecraftian monsters fall within their pantheon of horror? This might help.

Have a small (aheh) collection of tiny adorable tattoos. You're welcome?

Oh, and sure, there are more wiring diagrams needed, and at least a limited materials-needed list would be helpful, but this gives you at least a general idea of what you'd need...to keep you up at night.

Also, did you know you can get a free month of Reddit Gold (sort of their equivalent of pro membership) just by sending them a postcard? That's interesting. (It might just be a free trial of the gold service; but it's still interesting.)

And just to mention this, for fellow horror fans, there are a few movie posters popping up that seem to be advertisements for films coming to theatres soon, but in fact are advertisements for You're Next, a horror film coming this August. It's a freakishly brilliant ad campaign. Kudos to Lionsgate.

Some more information on the Labrador pup mentioned yesterday from that friend:

Maggie is a 10 week old black lab puppy. She is part of my sister-in-law's family. She started acting lethargic and confused shortly after they all came to our area for a vacation/visit. They took Maggie to a local vet hospital for tests, and it turns out she has a liver shunt (http://www.dog-health-guide.org/caninelivershunt.html) It can be managed short term with diet and medicine, but for one as large and external like Maggie's, surgery is the only long term solution. My sis-in-law's family is already stretched beyond thin. The surgery itself costs upwards of $3,000 - and they already had over $1,000 in bills from the vet this week. I hope that helps a bit.

And, thanks to a ton of passionate, invested, creative folks, the NeoLucida device will receive full funding--and at some point, will be able to buy for the general public. Yay!

There's a new theory being tossed around as to why the Egyptians stopped building pyramids. It's fairly interesting, too, and consistent with the fact that Egypt as a whole, while more temperate earlier on, was always warmer than other locales.

That the perfection of construction was what caused the destruction of later pyramids, though...that's rather stunning as a concept. Apparently, you can be too good at something. Who knew?

under haunted skies I see you

So what is a meeroo? Apparently it's the thing Ozimals has come up with to sidestep the problematic bunny, and the ongoing battle with Amaretto. So the first thing it has going for it is it's not a horse. Yay?

Still, I'm not sold on them. They're squat little big-eyed stumpy-legged things that have no better purpose than any other scripted pet. (I manage sims for a living now; this makes me cranky about scripted pets and their occasionally dim-witted owners. Totally unapologetic about that, too, because I keep running into people who just don't seem to understand why I want to harm their pwecious li'l babies by telling them they can't have 89--or 112--or 128! My gods, 128!--little whatevers roaming around and hogging all the scripting resources for the entire sim they're on.)

But they seem to be the Next Big Thing on the grid, so brace yourselves for a LOT of hot primmy meeroo action here and there. I'll start up the industrial vat to brew up the insane amounts of chamomile tea we're likely all going to need.

(from the bizarre album)

Scenes from a hunt, episode 37: I found this pup sleeping in water, snoring away. He didn't seem to mind that he was wet in the least. Or else, he was very tired...

Reasons I don't shop at Ducknipple...well, there are a few. It's not so much due to anything beyond the fact that shopping there feels like shopping just about everywhere else. The clothes are nicely made, specifically detailed, and pretty much what everyone else is making, so I'm never sure if I like something there vaguely because I've seen it on someone, or because it looks like something else I liked vaguely once at another shop making it's-on-everyone-style knock-offs.

But this reason kind of cemented the dislike, in a BIG new way:

(from the bizarre album)

Yep. Totally not kidding, and it's a freebie. Guess you couldn't exactly charge for that...Or, well, you could, but then you'd have to move your business to the Adult continent.

so if you care to find me, look to the western sky

Portrait of the Artist as an Avatar. While this article is about art in Second Life, and art in general, I'd point your attention towards the end, wherein it mentions that virtual worlds may help to achieve long-desired goals in real worlds. Insecure? Be confident in SL; Shy; be outgoing. Because what we play at being, we become.

S'pose it's good for me, now, that I don't spend quite so much time zombified. Erk.

Japan remains baffling.

Seen at Violent Seduction:



Meet Jinx. Jinx is one of the freestanding ornamentia in the Sound of Silence sim. It's a lovely sim, well worth a walkthrough without being the home of Violent Seduction; it's perpetually night, there, and everything (well, nearly everything) is monochrome, in overlapping velvety shades of grey.

Jinx stands out, though.

Speaking of cats...



This is Smoke, a black cat I purchased from Damiani Creations at some point when I was feeling flush and triumphant. (I will not lie; they are ridiculously expensive.)

Sie (I've never been comfortable inquiring as to the sex of my virtual pet) likes to levitate at odd times.



Take this series, f'rinstance. I kept snapping pics, Smoke kept staring at me, seemingly completely unaffected by hir paws not meeting the ground.



To date, I've been more impressed by the purchase of said small Smoke-cat than nearly any other purchase I've made in SL. The scripting is amazing. There are multiple controlling options, but there's a limited AI functioning in there, and the pet will start making its own choices as to what it wants to do. It's been intriguing to watch.

Still, it's moments like these--when sie just casually hangs out, defying expected conventions, because it was born on the grid, and understands implicitly its rules of behavior...that make them joys to own.

Now, if we could just figure out a way to keep hir rainbow ball in my skybox, damn it!



Yellow Jester's just come out with some LOVELY zombie poseball sets, from L$249 to the gluttonous six-ball set, Feast of Flesh, for $499. Just in time for the holidays, too!

I can't decide if these are cool, or...odd. I think it's the oddly bulbous skirt of the lass on the left of the image.

And finally, we come to the heart of the argument between Eros LLC, and Linden Labs: as mentioned by this article for the Kotaku blog, the sex coffin available on XStreet.

Now, is Alixandre Oleander in violation of Eros LLC's copyrighted, DMCA-protected, SexGen engine and animation sets? Oh, indubitably. But, though that is concerning, what I find slightly more galling? Is the same could be applied to everything they sell. Everything they have listed on XStreet violates someone's intellectual property.

(And yes, I do know, the rules governing such only changed recently, but--they did change. Which means not only did they not comply with the rules as they changed, but they then stole SexGen's animation and engine, somehow--which again, shouldn't be that easy at this point...)

Also, while it mostly covers World of Warcraft, remember Second Skin is now available on DVD, in limited release in theatres, and on Hulu, for the Americans reading along.

Last note--is it copyright infringement, or tribute, for art? To find the Persistence of Memory interactive, and decide for yourself, go for a visit. You can own a copy for yourself...or just observe and interact.