Because I have been reading FAR too many freebie and fashion blogs (my inventory is groaning under the weight!) I feel strangely compelled to tell you what I am wearing on the grid today:
Skin:
[]::Tuli::[] Emily [light/1] ~ coal (freckled) (group gift). One major thing I've noticed since resuming my second life is that there are a lot more good quality freebie or dollarbie skins than when I was a newbie, or maybe there are just more blogs to tell us where they are ;) This skin is lovely and summery, and I know you can't see the freckles on this pic but they're great nonetheless.
Hair:
* 0 Style * fog * Newbie Hair in black. I'm wearing a lot of shorter hair lately and I felt this had a kind of sixties mod feel to complement the dress.
Dress:
*Love Aya* retrospective two-piece (free). I tinted the white belt to match my ears and popped a purple system turtleneck on the underwear layer.
Boots:
Umi Usagi. These white ones were a seasonal edition which I
think I got for L$50 or thereabouts. I couldn't find them in the main store but you can buy them in black or brown suede for L$100, or hang around and hope the lucky chair comes good. I love my bunneh boots!
Tights:
+SPICA+ (free).
Ears: Umi Usagi (free). Yes, OK, I love this shop. It makes me a happy bunny.
Nails:
.:to heart:. (free) There is a fun goth/vampire skin freebie as well and the normal skins are L$25 for a set of five makeups.
Bracelet:
Fresh Baked Goods *VELVET* SIM Launch Gift (free)
(You can't see my tail, but I can't remember where I got it from anyway. It's one of those full-copy Linden-produced objects you find in freebie boxes everywhere.)
Labels: Clothes, Fashion, Freebies, Newbies, Shopping
I am so
fucking sick of getting Ruthed every other time I log in. I'm sorry for the profanity, but that's how I feel. About the only thing that keeps me logging in these days is being able to dress up and do my hair, and if I can't even do that anymore, tell me why I should stick around. Quite frequently nowadays, I'll be at the computer and I won't even bother trying to log in.
I wanted to love you, SL, I really, really did. But you're just not ready for primetime. Not even close. I wouldn't put up with a buggy, half-functional product in any other arena, why should you be any different?
As I've said before, my RL circumstances prevent me getting an SL job. So my only feasible source of income is RL dollars. Without which no rental, no shopping, no fun. But you think I'm putting any more of my money into a service this unreliable? Are you on crack?
As for the people... oh yes, the people. I actually think SL has been very bad for me in this respect. If you're lonely in your first life, because you're shy and find it hard to connect to people, don't go expecting your second life to be any different. People are still people, whether they're made of pixels or flesh, and if you have trouble relating to them in other contexts it's unlikely to be any easier here. I know that should have been obvious to me, but it wasn't. And as I say, it was pretty depressing when I figured it out.
I've lived in places where I didn't know anyone. It wasn't fun. And yeah, I know, I only have myself to blame for not being socially adept enough to cut it. It still wasn't fun.
So now, I'll try to log in for the third time. And if I'm still Ruthed, I guess that's it for today. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Or maybe I won't.
no love,
Calantha
Labels: Newbies, Second Life, Second Life sucks
July 18 2007
Well I entered the
Face of Style contest, even though they demanded a profile pic and my nose is not the best. (Hey, I'm not changing it. It may not be perfect, but it's
mine.)
I actually did buy more than one thing in the Last Call sale, it's just that the pics I took wearing the other outfit didn't come out as well:
But that's not today's big news. I'm renting a house!
It's a L$150 for 150-prims job, so my only major piece of furniture is a bed, but it's nice to have a place of my own to get changed and mess about with prims. I picked up a box of free sculptie textures and have been playing with them. Sculpties are just fantastic if you're living on a low-prim parcel, and luckily I have a fair few free textures to apply to them too:
There was a heart shape in there so I made a pair of earrings, and took the picture in the dark so you could see them glow.
Oh my god, I made something I might actually wear! Night night.
Labels: Clothes, Jewellery, Newbies, Property, Random Happenings, Second Life
May 29th, 2007
Another day, another pair of butterfly wings:
The changing rooms at NCI Beach have become a regular hangout for me, in the absence of a home and all 
Today, I thought I’d take a look at Chi. Pretty place, but suffers from the usual SL malady of being almost totally deserted:
I ended up teleporting to a lovely meditation garden where I had a random conversation with the owner about Milton Keynes and the American War of Independence:
Doing my usual round of the clubs tonight, I won L$20 (net gain L$10) on the slot machine I had to play to get access to the camping chair in front of it. Which to a poverty-striken tramp like me is a decent amount. Don’t let me ever play them again 
I look like a tramp right now in both senses of the word. I was looking for an outfit that might justify the tights, but nothing in the world could justify these tights.
Labels: Clothes, Exploring, Newbies, Second Life
May 28th, 2007
Today, I walked past the newbie money globe that paid out for me, and it had no money in it, so I gave back the L$10 it had so generously loaned me so another newbie can go squander it on sploders 
In case you don’t hang out in SL clubs, I should explain that a sploder is a sort of lottery where people in the vicinity pay in (usually about L$10) and then wait for a random draw to take place and redistribute the money among them. First sploder I entered, I won L$17, so that was a net gain of $7. Second one, I got L$8 and a pair of pink sunglasses, so that was a net loss of $2 (though I suppose it’s just possible that somebody could have persuaded me to part with a dollar for the glasses). Third one, I got nothing — net loss of $10. So altogether I am L$5 worse off thanks to sploders, and my luck wasn’t that bad. It could easily have been L$30. So, no more sploding for me.
Yesterday I went to a zoo! I rode something I was informed was a tiger cub (my wings make me fearless, which in the case of sploders is a Bad Thing):
Then it was off to look at the penguins. You can’t go wrong with penguins:
And shortly after this some random guy started telling me how beautiful and pure and like a fairy princess I looked (we all know what this means by now) so I teleported out to the Botanic Gardens. I didn’t see all of it, but it’s now on my go-back-to list. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:
Labels: Clubbing, Exploring, Newbies, Second Life
May 27th, 2007
Caledon is a Victorian/steampunk district that’s worth a visit, not least for the themed freebies available on the stalls when you teleport in I was already kitted out in a wedding dress and leather jacket ensemble, though, so I haven’t actually tried my new costumes on yet.
Thanks to the magic of timezones, everywhere (including this turn-of-the-century hangout) was deserted, but fun to look at nonetheless.
Eventually I happened across a library hosting an exhibition on the Brownings. This is a lovely example of the educational possibilities of SL. Where a few years ago a college student might have put her multimedia project on a website, now she can curate a virtual exhibition.
I'll definitely be paying a return visit one day!
Labels: Caledon, Exploring, Newbies, Second Life
May 27th, 2007
So, my Italian IM’d me, and I gave him another chance, but it won’t be happening again. I did a little cybering in IRC about, oh, a decade ago now? And I seem to remember it wasn’t that great and left me feeling slightly soiled, but at least it turned me on. Somehow the crudeness — in both senses of the word — of the animations kills any eroticism in the words, and heaven knows there wasn’t all that much of it to destroy. All that ridiculous hopping about from ball to ball, looking for new, increasingly anatomically unlikely ways to hump… honestly, camping is a more interesting and productive way to spend time, because a) you’re getting paid and b) you can check your email or sort your inventory while you’re doing it.
I can see the novelty of clubbing wearing off eventually too, but for now it’s kind of fun cobbling together outfits from the freebie boxes and setting off to earn my dollars on the dance pads. Yes, it’d be quicker to take a couple of real dollars out of my PayPal account and just buy some, but where’s the adventure in that?
What I’m actually going to do with these dollars, I have no idea. Blow it on shoes? Save up for a year and buy a nice skin? Upload some of my own textures? Make charitable donations to money trees?
Labels: Clubbing, Newbies, Second Life, Sex
May 23rd, 2007
I had a delicious new set of free skins and outfits from Midsummer Night Creations, and finding that one of them was a lovely red ballgown I set about finding a ballroom to take them for a twirl.
I was wallflowering around, until a guy in a tuxedo loomed behind me. ‘Ciao, principessa.’ I am counting this as my first ‘Hey sexy’. One thing about being in the UK, you’re online when the (other) Europeans are, so you get a better class of random.
So, my Italian stallion takes me to the dancefloor before inviting me to adjourn to a secluded spot by a fountain:
And then he asks me if I like the beach. ‘I love the beach!’ I enthuse. ‘But I don’t have a bikini.’ (I did go looking for free and dollarbie bikinis yesterday, but no joy.) He says he will find a good beach, then teleport me there.
Oh naive little newbie girl in her ridiculous Barbie frock looking to be whirled around the dancefloor like Ginger Rogers! The beach is essentially a knocking shop. But I go with it. And if pixellated nudity offends you, you may wish to leave at this point.
I think I did reasonably well constructing the outfit here, considering the short notice and the time constraints. Naturally, though, it doesn’t last that long.
There are no words for this gravity-defying pose. I mainly just said YES a lot. It seemed to suffice.
He was coming for a very long time. In the interests of realism I chose not to say too much while this was going on, just ‘mmmmm’. Obviously if you’re naked in a public place fellating a penis that is a completely different colour from the rest of the body while it pours pints of imaginary semen down your throat, realism shouldn’t be a consideration, but never mind.
He tried to tell me he was a virgin, but somehow I doubt I’m the first girl he’s picked up and taken to the knocking shop, sorry, beach.
Labels: Newbies, Second Life, Sex
May 23rd, 2007
Being a girl, I wanted some more clothes and hair, so I went in quest of freebies. I found a big warehouse type place with boxes of free stuff, which was cool, then it was back to Orientation Island to try stuff on in peace. After that, I naturally wanted to show off my new threads, so I did a quick search for newbie-friendly places and fetched up in Jade’s Jazz Lounge in time for sunset:
I don’t smoke in real life, never have, never will, but I had a box of free smokes here and I was gonna use them! I had a quick dance with a fellow newbie named Kevvin who complimented me on my pink hair He took off not long after though, so I hung around a little longer before deciding that I might as well find a camping place that would actually pay me for sitting around smoking.
Well, that was not a resounding success. The ‘coffee shop’ I tried was full of people (most of them French) but ten minutes later I was still no nearer getting any free cash so I quit and went in quest of moneytrees. I didn’t find any, but I found a Dutch beach resort that would pay me for cleaning the bar. Who’d have thought my free cannabis wings and joint would come in handy?
The need for a handbag fund then drove me to a shopping centre where I could indulge my artistic tendencies:
I hadn’t been able to get to New Citizens’ Plaza earlier as it was too crowded, but I teleported there now and headed for the photobooth so you could actually see my face:
Browsing among the newstands, I was very happy to stumble upon a magic ball dispensing a newbie stipend of L$10.
Whereupon, a passing fellow newbie threw a pair of knickers at me and I was happy to return the favour by offloading onto him some of my unwanted free male clothes. Thus ended another day.
Labels: Newbies, Second Life
