Vintage gone steampunk.

If you look back over the entries in my blog, you will see I am fond of showing contrasts.  Below is an image of me in Caledon at the Steam Sky City. I am wearing the same dress as in my last post, but I've added a few elements to give it what I think is a nice steampunk feel.  As always, I suggest you visit Caledon, one of the most scenic and friendly and vast estates in SL.  And they like you to wear Victorian and/or steampunk clothes if you have some.  Don't know what steampunk is?  Check out this link.  Without further comment, here's the image.

Vintage Awesomeness From Grumble

This weekend Grumble will be selling the mesh dress shown here for 60L!  With boots!  If the last one like this was Prissy's cup of tea, this one is mine.  Goth and/or steampunk style!  I luv it!  I'm going to dig up a top hat, some gloves, Victorian boots and brass goggles to give this a truly steampunk look. 

The hair is a freebie from A&A, you should check them out in the Marketplace. A&A and Blackburn were places I discovered in marketplace that have a lot of nice freebies you don't even have to be in world to pick up!

The location is Pair A Dice. As are most of my shots if I do not mention a location along with the image. If you've never been there you really should stop on by. If you can't find it in Search, look me up. The pick is in my favorites tab.

Random Randomness

I was looking for a snapshot today, and came across an image I barely recalled taking.  And I certainly don't remember where I was.  But it was an interesting shot.  So I ran through all the snapshots I have on my current PC in my Mint SLSS folder and found several nice images that I've never published here.  Some I recognize the location, some not.  Some outfits I've shown before, some I haven't.  The following are offered without further comment, as an illustration of things we just happen to find in Second Life.

How about some new sites to see?

I ostensibly started this blog as a travelogue of Second Life.  But I tend to get distracted by the shopping, and other things.  But there are so many neat places I just don't get around to.

I was having trouble sleeping, yet again, and decided to hit some of the recommended sites featured in the Singularity search dialog.  Most were interesting to some degree, but the two that made the most impression were:

The Winter Ice Rock Festival

And

Inspire Space Park

Interestingly, the Space Park is listed as a good place to chat.  While I found many avatars there, even at the odd hour of the morning when I visited, no one was chatting.  Though it is still an interesting place to visit, and perhaps at other hours it's filled with more talkative folks.  I also visited a few music venues, but none stood out for having awesome music, and as a rule, they were filled with people using obnoxious gestures.   I really could do without gestures in SL

Hope you are having a good life, both physical and virtual.

Enmeshed in black and white bargins.

Been shopping again, some at the month long Thrift shop event, some in marketplace.  Below are two really nice mesh outfits.  The black leather dress is from Dollle.  The black pumps are from Grumble.  The white dress is Novi and the shoes are from Blackburn.  The awesome black leather outfit is heavily discounted currently at the Thrift shop, the white dress is a dollarbie!

Prissy Pretty in Pink

There is another excellent 60L special at Grumble this weekend.  It is just the sort of thing my friend Prissy likes, so I got her to pose in it for you all.  Aint she adorable!

It's mesh, and includes not only the dress, but the leggings, shoes and hair band.  Called the sweetie apron dress, it is, don't you think?

Speaking of pink, below is the little Kawaii outfit from AIK I wore on Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day Parade

I went to a great party at Club Stiletto for Valentine's day.  Live singing, DJs, and the longest dance line I've ever seen in SL.  My viewer reported 50 people there, which is I think about the most a sim can handle.  It was great fun!  This place is current favorite dance club in SL.  BTW, I'm the one in pink.

Grumble is hitting it outa the park lately.

Here's another picture of me in those awesome mesh ankle boots from Grumble.  But the jacket is also Grumble goodness.  This is a secret sale item this weekend only.  At the main Grumble landing point for only 60L!  It's an excellent item and would be priced twice that most places.  So, get on down to Grumble as quick as you can and nab one!

The skirt is a bargain item from last year's Goth fair, and the hair is a freebie from last year's hair fair.  I'm loving this little dressy yet goth outfit.

When the little head does the thinking.

I was recently people watching in SL, and saw an avatar I just have to comment on.  In SL, you can make your avatar all kinds of shapes.  Sometimes you see avatars that are obviously misshapen for effect.  But sometimes you see them that are just far enough off of what looks right, that you have to wonder.  And this fellow was that.  He had the typical massive giant male avatar, but then he had a teeny tiny little head.  And when I looked at his profile, I was surprised to see he was no noob.  He had been in world longer than I have been.  I was too timid to IM him and ask if it was a subtle joke.  Anyway here's a picture, face pixelated, next to DaVinci's Vitruvian man,  Which is considered an ideal male shape.  SL is 3D, so there may be a bit of foreshortening in the image, but I assure you, it is minimal.  The proportions in world are as shown.  And yes, he is standing on one leg.  His AO moved him just as I took the image.

When I see a massive misshapen avi like this in an adult sim, and they are not wearing clothes, I've noticed that the size of the lower head, is often as much over-sized, as the upper head is undersized.  I guess it might be a case of the image reflecting which body part is most involved in the thinking.

More awesome mesh footwear.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the best fitting boots I've ever had in SL here.  Turns out Grumble is starting to make even more stuff like this.  These new ankle boots shown here are part of offerings for the Thrift shop full sim event.  But the fact the boots are non-rigged mesh and mod, means that you can resize them in all three dimensions separately.  That makes them a marvel for fitting to any size avatar. 

The dress is an older offering also from Grumble.  As it happens the jewelry and hair I'm wearing are all from Grumble as well.  So you can see that it's a one stop shop sort of place.  The place is like Sears for SL or something. 

The location where I took the snapshot here is the new beauty salon at Pair A Dice.  All sort of activities and opportunities to catch up on your gossip abound.

So you should take a few minutes and swing by all three places and check them out.

Mood Swings

I dress to fit my mood each time I log into SL.  I couldn't always tell you what my choices mean, but if you look at what I'm wearing, it definitely gives you some idea of where my head is, or at least was, when I last dressed.  For example, check out these two consecutive days.

On the left, I'm wearing a hoody and shorts I found in the marketplace as freebies.  Hoody is from Statement, shorts are from LRH.  The socks are from a B@R outfit, and the boots are Aspen boots from Grumble.  The hat and hair I've had forever.  I think maybe that look says, I'm kinda tired and cold and want to feel cozy and comfortable?

On the right, I'm wearing a skirt from Happy Undead, corset from Hybridz, jacket from B@R and boots from Slave Dressing Room.  The hair is my old favorite from Bryce, and bracelets are from Grumble and the goth necklace, from Adoru.  This look?  Naughty maybe?

Another rant on religion.

Occasionally I will hear of something done by so called "Men of God" that just sticks in my craw and sets me to thinking on religion.  I've come to feel that religion, by which I mean a belief system involving some apparently supernatural component, is not, of itself, an evil thing.  In fact, religion has been an important component of the creation of culture, civilization, art, even science.

Yes even science, if you are one of those people who think that the religious types are invariably about repressing scientific inquiry, stop and read up on the pioneers of math and science.  Yes, there have been cases of it, but it isn't a constant.  In fact I would say religion opposes scientific inquiry and education more now than most periods in history.  Which in reality is probably more about maintaining the authority of those in power among organized religion, than anything else.

Religion gave us art that lifts the spirit and enlightens the mind.  Gothic Cathedrals, Hagia Sophia, The Alhambra, Di Vinci's Last Supper, votive music, I could go on and on and on.  The basic piece of instruction in most great world religions can be boiled down to what is essentially, be nice to each other.  Not a bad idea.

Where things go wrong is when people create an organized religion.  That's when you get rules on how this be must done, and how that must never be done.  That is the evil entity that requires a Hell to punish the sinners, or rewards those that kill the heretic with a do not pass go, move straight to heaven card. Organized religion can be turned into a tool of government.  And when that happens, evil always follows.

I would even go so far as to say that even organizing atheists is a chancy thing.  I'm an agnostic.  Why?  Because I am moderately well educated not only in history, but in science and math.  And there are enough strange bizarre coincidences that we have discovered, via rigorous scientific inquiry, that I can't help but go, "Wow, that almost seems like someone designed things that way."  And I don't mean Eve from Adam's rib, or that dinosaur fossils were buried by Satan to mislead man.  I mean things like, to pick just one:

• Water floats when it freezes, which is really weird.  Every other common terrestrial substance, does the opposite.  If it sank like everything else, life could not exist on Earth.

So, if atheists could make a law saying that there is no god and those that pretend there is, are outlaws, I might find myself an outlaw someday.   I think freedom of belief is a wonderful thing.  And frankly, for an enlightened society, a necessary one.  And for that to be possible, religion, especially organized religion, must be separate from government.

A small number of ignorant people in the US point to the fact that we are "one nation under god" to mean that the founding fathers meant for the US to only extend freedom of belief to Christians.  Given that I'd wager half of them were closet, or not so closet, Deists, I don't think so.  Even so, that's not how it's worded in the constitution.  And while they were all of Christian cultures, they were educated men of the world.  And thus were quite aware of Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, as well as the beliefs of the Native Americans.  So, if they meant Christianity, I'm sure writers of the quality of Thomas Jefferson would have used that word, not religion.

So, why blurt all this out into my blog?  Well, it's my own tiny way to try and say to all those who use religion as a tool for hate, oppression and power, we know what you are doing.  You aren't fooling anyone.  You are the worst kind of hypocrite.  So, frankly, we'd like you stop.

Under A Winter Sky

The most alive I ever feel
is when the air is cold and still.
When snow is on the ground
and I listen for a sound;
the softest sound that I know,
the sound of softly falling snow.
When all that is in my sight
is lit by eldritch fairy light.
A peace fills me to the brim
as I listen to nature's silent hymm.

---

It snowed where I live in RL last night and I went out and stood in the falling snow for a while.  I'm not a big fan of blizzards, ice storms or driving on slick roads with other people who deal even less well than I do with these type of conditions.  We rarely see a deep fluffy snow fall like this one and the nights when it happens have always seemed so magical to me.  This little rhyme came to mind as I stood in the strange white night.  Hope you find it amusing.  Stay warm and I hope you enjoying both your lives.

Lee Serrao

PS: Coat is from Grumble, shoes are Blackburn. The stand in for the snowy night is the open square in front of the Xcite main store.

It's random stuff yet again.

RL and SL have been stressing me out a lot lately, so don't really have a lot I want to share.  But, in the interest of putting stuff here, please enjoy these random outfits taken at random places, mostly at Pair A Dice, but some elsewhere.

It's a fairy!  Hovering over the the wave washed shore at an Elven sim.

Miss Zana and Me at Stiletto's

In a Leather dress

Me, doing various looks such as a wood elf, a castaway with a bamboo spear and an no, that's not the artist once known at Prince.  The left and right images are taken at Pair A Dice, but the center was done at the photo studio you can find above the Blakopal main shop.  The purple suit is a Relay for Life purchase from ages ago, courtesy of SF Design.