Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: Virtual Bourbon Street

It should come as no surprise that after visiting the real New Orleans, I just had to stop by the fake one. I put on my stylin’ new Steampunk hat that Cynthia Barley made me, grabbed my virtual car, and set out.

A few sims in Second Life ® try to re-create parts of the city, but it was sad to say that virtual Bourbon Street seemed as deserted, on a Tuesday morning anyway, as the real one would be at that time.

I’d expected at least some European and Asian gawkers to be stumbling along, their avatars virtually hammered on fake Hurricanes. I’d also hoped to find some of the real-life establishments copied in the virtual world.  I did eventually find the spirit of New Orleans….but not here.

Instead, the eerie emptiness got oppressive. I drove my car up and down vacant streets, getting a few good snapshots along the way.  I felt like Will Smith’s character, Robert Neville, in I am Legend. When I went into a nicely designed mall, however, most of the stalls were up for rent, and the only working one sold vehicles and other items unrelated to life in the Big Easy.  Business there does not seem to be booming…I’d hoped to find Mardi-Gras beads, masks, a Voodoo shop. Perhaps I need to check the side streets.

The Absinthe Cafe was at least themed to life in the Cresent City, but it was so clean and well lit!  The Old Absinthe House, on the real Bourbon Street, is a bit gritty, crowded with decor (and patrons), and dimly lit.  I know which one I prefer…

But I will keep exploring this and other virtual versions of New Orleans to see what I find. At least there will be no virtual hang-overs to nurse the morning after.

Readers can help me by visiting Bourbon Street on their own and sending me reports.  Here’s the teleport link.

Just after I finished the draft of this blog entry, I read Linden Lab’s announcement of a “Day of Remembrance” for people involved in SL™ who have left it or, in some cases, passed away in real life. Linden Lab® has a sim for charity events that is modeled on New Orleans, and for the Day of Remembrance it features music, other entertainment, and jazz funerals!

So I’m off to a region called Big Easy!  Now that’s more like it, and little green dots are all over that map, so..it won’t be empty! Bring on the avatars, and let the good times roll!

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Linden Lab Web Site

King Philip has handed over his crown.  This from Linden Lab’s ® Philip Rosedale:

I said a month ago that I was looking for a new CEO to lead Linden Lab, and we’ve found one! His name is Mark Kingdon, and his Second Life name is “M Linden”. . . .In terms of history, he has a background in art, economics, and business. He has been in successful and highly regarded leadership roles at two companies that are bigger than Linden Lab: PricewaterhouseCoopers and Organic. He is a well-loved people leader who is fearless and can weather challenges and change.

Read the full announcement here.

My hope is that we won’t lose the wild and irreverent humor that makes SL ™ so much fun for many of us.  Kingdon’s background is an interesting duo; perhaps it is just what the fake world needs.  As long as mile-high afros (thanks Tempest, for the snap) do not get banned…I’m cool with a few changes.

But if it becomes avatars in gray flannel suits? I’m out of here!  So will everything that makes the Metaverse worth visiting.

I hope Mark Kindgon…I mean King Mark, does well and can address the ongoing issues of stability and reduced investement by “majors” in SL.  Or, if the Metaverse does not prove fruitful for major corporations, can this new leader put together a winning combination of small-scale entrepreneurs, cultural creatives, and educators?

“King Mark” has a nice ring to it. What’s the line from Tennyson’s

Idylls of the King

, about King Mark, who knew how to deal with a problem? He’d found his wife with another man…oh yeah!  “ ‘Mark’s Way,‘ said Mark, and clove him through the brain.“

Sometimes fixing problems hurts

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Richmond Island

I got this sad note from our roving correspondent and virtual hillbilly, Pappy Enoch:

Dear Mistophur Wiggly:

Reed this-hear note I dun got frum mah son…

“Mah Deer Pappy:

I are a-stayin’ wif Auntie Jezz-bell, Miz Di, and Miz Shauna (hoo giggles sum’fin feerce wen I looks up her short skirt at her frilly panty-loons).

These-hear Aunties pets mah lil’ head, calls mee hunny-bunny, kisses me reg’lar, n’ don’t make mee run no still o’ put Shine intu heavy-ol’ jugs befo’ I kin eat suppur.

So I reckuns I will see you…sum’time. May-bee.

Yo’ Lil’ Bundul o’ Joy,

Marcus Boo-boo Aurelius Enoch”

I tried to console the poor Shiner, but he was beyond help.  So, using my unparalleled skills as an investigative fake reporter, I found Jezzabel myself and invited her over to Richmond Island, where I knew any firearms or chainsaws in her possession would not harm me.

Our meeting was short but not sweet.  I tried to corn-vince her to come to terms with her brother, but reason made no headway with the former roller-derby queen.

She replied that “I ain’t stoppin’ nuffin’ till that skally-wag pays mee mah 135 milly-yun Linden Dollurs!  Now yu stay the Sam Hill out’n famerly bizness, mistophur…” and then…

She laid a beating on me I’ll never forget, after sayin’ “I likes yu,  boy…yu reminds mee o’ mah secund huzzbind, Jedidiah Agamemnon Hawgwallup, hoo died in bed wun nite aftur gittin’ rite tuckered out.”

After she clobbered me, Jezz added, “Imaginerfy whut I wood du to sum’buddy I don’t keer for.” 

Good luck, Pappy. You’ll need it!

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Unknown, but Scary

Remember the Twilight Zone episode called “It’s a Good Life,” in which a six-year-old Billy Mumy (later to be Will Robinson, of Lost in Space fame) acquired godlike powers and decided to punish adults? He sealed off his small town in a sort of “pocket universe” where he ruled.  If anyone displeased him, the six-year-old godling would banish him or her into “The Cornfield,” never to be heard from again.

This is a legend about Linden Lab®…they made a Cornfield for the worst of griefers and malcontents. Their avatars would be sent there, and the owners could not make them leave. They’d be able to chat with each other in a place that had a stand of corn and a rusty tractor.  But that was it.  They were in the virtual afterlife.

Until recently, I thought this all an invention.  But Justin, one of my students, got stuck in a terrible place; in trying to rescue him, I nearly followed.  He had been shopping at a store that sold Star Wars avatars.  When he logged back on, all he could see was a bleak horizon, half gray and half brown, stretching into infinity.  He could communicate with no one.  He was online but not: when I logged on, I could not detect him or bring him to safety with a teleport.

So we met, in person, in my office to untangle this. Justin logged in on my laptop using the Second Life® fake world, and using the Onrez client I logged in on the same machine and went to his location. The store was gone.  In its place was a typically banal SL™ home, and when I walked up, it got a message along the lines of “you have 60 second to leave this property or you will be ejected!”  As I scurried away I wondered—between Justin’s log-ins had the property changed hands, and his last location become a sort of limbo?

Moving out of range of the grim warning, I look the controls from Justin and began to use SL’s™ camera settings to view the confines of his prison.  Soon I saw what looked like a hole in the roof of his prison and the SL™ full moon. But his avatar could not move toward it.  For just a second, however, Justin showed on Iggy’s screen as “Online.”

I lunged for the “teleport” button as Justin yelled “get me the hell out of there!”  The story ended with Justin reaching the safe-haven of Richmond Island….and we both wondered, as we lounged by the university’s virtual gazebo, if we hadn’t both had a close enounter with….The Cornfield.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: None of Your Business

I’ve often wondered about the “weapon” pictured in this photograph.  The fake world of Second Life®  Liberation Army set off a bunch of nukes in the American Apparel’s now defunct store (they are not reading this so I won’t bother with the stupid “®“  that Linden Lab®  so loves now).

As the photo shows, the ultimate weapon in SL™ can orbit all the avatars in a location, pushing them far up into the virtual stratosphere.  Such victims must then log off and on again. A student reports that a friend suffered this fate. I still need to have it done to me.

“Push” really sounds fun—I think that the Linden Lab® people did this to me at their last Town Hall, when I kept insisting that I should get into the crowded arena. I was suddenly flung through entire regions at supersonic speed…it was rather fun. I did manage, eventually, to sneak back into the gathering disguised as a gorilla, but I digress.

“Sim Crash” is a nasty thing indeed. The virtual nuke will produce enough visual special effects to paralyze the processor of the computer that runs that particular region of SL™ so it must reboot.  That means the entire region (sim) shuts down and everyone there is banished, probably with the SL™  client crashing so they must log on again.

Of course, most of what I describe would certainly make one a SL™ griefer.  But one sleeps safer at night knowing that ultimate retaliation is only a few clicks (and many thousands of LInden Dollars™ ) away.  I simply must have one!  I do wonder if sims that turn off scripting (a rather heavy-handed tactic) could escape the atomic fury of this weapons…no scripts, no big kaboom?

The fun one could have!  I like furries just fine; Goreans creep me out (gentle readers, if you don’t know what they are, Google the term).  Let’s nuke ‘em!  I need some vengeance for the time I’ll never get back again after trying to wade through one of John Norman’s books in my teens…

What IS Option #3?  Can you RIDE a fake nuke down to atomic oblivion, as Slim Pickens’ character (Major T. J.  King Kong) did in Dr. Strangelove?

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Linden Lab® “Brand Center”

Second Life®,  SL™, Linden Lab®, and more: Linden Lab® is now asking all of us who write about their invented world to include a trademark brand on certain terms.  I’m going to follow their usage, mostly because I want to point out how ridiculious and childish this all seems to Ignatius Onomatopoeia®, Pappy Enoch®, Beeble Baxter®  and more of us® in the Second Life® fake world. 

Neal Stephenson®  coined the term “Metaverse” in his novel

Snowcrash

, incidentally…maybe he should get the Lindens®  for infringement of his intellectual property.

By the way, I think I will always use the locution “fake world” now when referring to Linden Lab’s® Metaverse.  Maybe even “the Linden Lab®  Fake World Known as Second Life® .“

I’m catty that way.

While companies must protect their brands, I’m not alone in the Blogosphere in busting my gut laughing at this silliness.  Legally minded readers may wish to refer to the section on proper use of SL® terms in text.  The Brand Center, like any good LL® roll-out, is full of confusing bugs, but I’m certain that the Lab will iron them out with future releases….I’ll be holding my breath.

I want to thank bloggers and SL® personalities like Gwyneth Llewelyn® for pointing out, in her open letter to the Lindens, how contradictory and unenforceable their new policies are. Can they REALLY expect to be able to track down all of us who forget a copyright or trademark notice after common nouns and adjectives such as “Second” and “Life”?  Of course, is it bloggers and other lowlife the Lindens® are after?

Gwyn® does point out a legitimate need for Linden Lab’s® policy:

The second issue is that a lot of their competitors are placing ads with things like “Start your Second Life on There.com” or something similar. You might even see things like “Clothes for your Second Life” on Google Ads and be redirected to… IMVU. This is what LL needs to prevent.

Right now, the Lindens® cannot even keep their invented world online reliably.  Perhaps they will have more success with cease-and-desist letters

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land®“ Archive for old posts

Location: The Old Absinthe House, Bourbon Street

At long last, and despite the storm that nearly killed this amazing old city, I get to enjoy an (again legal) absinthe at one of the best watering-holes in New Orleans. The building has housed a bar for 200 years, though its fixtures were hidden away during the moronic American spectacle called Prohibition, when do-gooders thought they could save us from vice by telling everyone else what to do. But despite the decades—no, centuries—of atmosphere in Jean Lafitte’s old hangout, I keep wondering how real the public face of this city is today.

Looking along Bourbon street trough my cloud of cigar smoke, I also wonder how different it all is from Second Life.

It’s not the absinthe talking, though the allure of the fabled liquor cannot be denied.  I love this town. There’s an amazing emotional pull of its old buildings and its unique culture. The very building where I’m sipping the drink of poets and madman,  as its Web site notes, hosted “Oscar Wilde, P.T. Barnum, Mark Twain, Jenny Lind, Enrico Caruso, General Robert E Lee” as well as being the supposed meeting place for Andrew Jackson and the pirate Jean Lafitte.

This city, in the wake of Katrina, seems even more of an invented world than ever, and New Orleans was always an anomaly in the US, more a Mediterranean port jammed into the Deep South.  It’s our anti-Disney World. Instead of a sanitized version of an idyllic, forward-looking America, New Orleans gave us a glancing-over-the-shoulder, shadowy, and scruffy city at peace with its own wickedness.

It’s the South I prefer to that of the fanatical boobs who actually claimed that Katrina was the wrath of God on a wicked city.  Perhaps a petty, juvenile God, too clumsy to punish individual sinners, instead decided to lash out at a bunch of poor African-Americans and elderly working-class whites who did not flee in time. I think not. Shame on anyone who would believe such a thing.

So I want this place to remain intact and funky, a humid and pugnacious rebuke to the smooth, sleek, and unsustainable America of strip-malls, gated suburbs, and chain restaurants (yeah, I see chain places here and hurry past them).  But with sea levels rising and wetlands south of town not being restored after decades of devastation, New Orleans will again be hit by another huge Gulf hurricane. It is a matter of time, and the levees here have not been rebuilt to withstand a category four or five storm.

That’s a pity. Despite the crowds of drunken frat-boys staggering into the Penthouse Club and boozing businessmen eying girls young enough to be their daughters, The French Quarter retains something intangible.  These losers are our griefers, though I cannot report them to Linden Lab when they get out of hand.  I just duck into one of the Quarter’s nicer bars for a cigar and a drink.

Incidentally, if you don’t like the taste of licorice (I do) you will not enjoy absinthe. And no gift of Linden Dollars will pry from me the secret of the great neighborhood we found where the locals party.  Come down to the Big Easy and look for yourself.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Mystikal Hair Designs

I really like the sense of humor that some merchants have in Second Life.

I guess you have to have one, if you rent at least, given my recent story about the land-grab by an owner without any warning to her tenants.  Still, even with an angelic landlord there is still the vagary of Second Life itself.  Lately Linden Lab has been issuing little warnings like the one mentioned in my last blog.  These say, essentially “you can walk around and chat but don’t even THINK of using your inventory or transferring any funds around. The database is all messed up.”

That must really warm merchants’ hearts, so a sense of humor may be the only defense against despair.  That is why I went back to the folks who sold me my dreadlocks.

I’m fond of anyone who can make fun of the pretensions of Second Life fashion.  So if you need some hair before Hair Fair 2008 opens its doors, you’ll do no better than stopping by Mystikal Hair Designs and check out the tresses on offer.

They put a smile on my face!

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Warming my Hands by a Trash-fire While Somewhere in the Bowels of Linden Lab People Curse and Scream at Their Computers

At Educause this year, Claudia Linden became a bit tweaked when a conference participant remarked how Wednesdays in the Metaverse were notorious for system downtime. The entire Grid, and with it all business and socializing, would go offline for a few hours.

Claudia replied that Wednesdays were no longer black. True…now “rolling restarts” of regions have replaced taking the entire Grid offline.  But systemic events are common, and they tend to make all of us feel a bit uneasy about doing anything with real money in this fake world.  Consider this from last Tuesday:

In World Service Disruptions Under Investigation
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 10:43 AM by: Teeple Linden

Some regions on the map are experiencing a slowdown or total disruption of essential in world services, including L$ transfers, mapping, and land transfers.  We’re still diagnosing.  We’ll follow this up with a worldwide shout: Please don’t attempt L$  or land transactions or transfer of valuable assets until we give an all-clear.

To avatars of my age, “all clear” reminds me of air-raid drills during the Cold War.  With Philip Rosedale planning to step down as the Linden Lab CEO, we may get a person more dedicated to stability and business online than changing the real world through a virtual one. 

We did, after a time, get this follow-up:

[UPDATE 11:37 a.m. Pacific] The Operations team has hunted the gremlin down. Thanks for your patience! We’ll follow this up with an in world announcement.

Gremlin?  I’m not geek enough to know what that means…I keep thinking of an awful-but-funky AMC car from the 1970s.

When I consider what it would be like for my brick-and-mortar stores, or even online ones, to say “no more purchases until we sound the all-clear signal,“ it occurs to me that a more business-minded I.T. exec may be JUST with Linden Lab needs now.  The Gremlins may not all be in the software…

And over the weekend, Wagner James Au reports that just as the concurrent number of avatars in-world passed 66,000 for the first time, the database on which SL works collapsed. The Lindens got it running again, but one wonders about missing inventory, lost monetary transactions, and so forth…

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Beautiful Land Sim

I learned this term in class as we discussed Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the novel that was a major inspiration for Second Life.  The word describes a no-holds-barred, unregulated form of commerce.  In the novel, everything that can be privatized has been and only laws are in the covenants of property-owners.  Government barely exists.

This was a promise of Second Life:  a wild online frontier.  Sounds great until real people lose hours of work and quite a bit of money at the lands of a land-owner not governed by any restraints that exist in the real world.

My guest-writer Tempest e-mailed me this morning: she went to her shop to find the land empty and a “for sale” sign on it.  Her landlord Sia, who had herself rented the parcel from an owner, sent an apologetic note: all of her rental property had been cleared, without warning, by the owner, an avatar named Lisa Francis. An event at a club that night had to be canceled, because there was only sand where the club had stood an hour before.

Tempest was too angry to write this blog for me, so she sent me to hunt down a few facts. I’m a cloistered academic living on an academic island, so all this is new to me, but I’ve uncovered a nasty side to the business of Second Life.

Ms. Francis sold the land out from under Sia and others without a refund. They took a substantial loss, even when one measures in Linden Dollars. Rental fees, paid in advance, can run hundreds per month on really large parcels.  Despite the losses Sia had incurred at the unscrupulous hands of Ms. Francis, Sia refunded the remaining lease-money to those who had sub-let shops and other spaces from her.

Of course Ms. Francis did not return my request for an interview.  When I teleported to a parcel of land listed in her profile, I was greeted by a for-sale sign and an avatar who came up to say “do not buy! The owner is crazy!”

I was told that, desperate for cash, Ms. Francis sold all her SL land and that meant her tenants were simply kicked out.  No lease that is binding protected them, and though they will file a complaint with Linden Lab, I doubt that the company, working full tilt lately on problems with our inventories and cash-transfers, can intervene to stop one deadbeat land-owner.

So much for the promise of anarchocapitalism. SL might need a few virtual lawyers, or at least some binding leases, if Linden Lab expects real people to invest real money in their purportedly “utopian” place. Their shuttering of unsecured virtual banks provides a precedent for how they might secure other investments.

They’d best hurry.

As I’ve said in this space before, if investors are better protected in a competing metaverse, Second Life may become a footnote in the history of Internet Use.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Virtual Desk, Givenchi Skyloft
by Guest Writer Tenchi Morigi

Well Second Life was quite frustrating at the beginning.

My first few hours on Orientation Island were quite frustrating and after some of the tasks I simply went to the exit and headed for the grid only to land in a weird infohub which even confused me more. Thinking that using the search engine to find places of interest would be the smartest choice I headed out for the adventure, endless imagination and steamy hot sex. Well the result was even more confusion and frustration and a pause of several days before I logged into SL again. This time I chose a more systematical approach and actually started to learn something about my new “me” and its capabilities. I wandered through Freebie-stores and looked for gathering places to get in touch with others and started manipulating my surroundings.

All this is now over a year ago and compared to the very frustrating beginning I am feeling comfortable on the grid have my share of fun and inspiration.

Of course not everything is in perfect harmony. SL is no cure for something but it surely offers opportunities for collaboration (like The Iggster’s Eng. 216 class), social interaction (the Givenchi resident project) or meeting some of the weirdest characters in the world (like Pappy Enoch) and it gives a first glimpse at what might expect us in lets say 50 years?

Investing time to learn the proper usage of the client and investing even more time to get around a bit and make contact with others have not been the most pleasant experiences. Yet some 12 months later I see all of this a bit more relaxed but in those days if I wouldn’t have met the right people giving me an easier start I guess I would hardly have stayed that long. The social interaction with others is an especially important part of my Second Life and if there would be none from one day to the next I would hardly have a reason to stay on.

The fact that I like most about Second Life is that it became an extension to my First Life with a constant exchange of Ideas between the grid and the meatspace. The various contacts from the most diverse groups gave me new insights and collaboration and gave my “existence” on the grid a whole new perspective which enriches my First Life also.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Globe Theatre

“Why hast thou that goosed look?” That’s what I asked the greeter robot, striding purposelessly and getting nowhere, in front of Second Life’s impressive recreation of the Globe Theatre.  Thanks to a tip from Beeble Baxter, I went by to get a look at the bard’s virtual digs.

I’m good enough with Elizabethan English to fake my way around a Ren Faire, even when I’m half-drunk.  So I was looking forward to causing some trouble at the Globe, getting into a virtual brawl in a tavern and being able to shout things like “Out, vile jelly!” or “Bind fast his corky arms!” or even “What, you egg!  Young fry of treachery!” as I was given the heave-ho out the door by some burly jackanapes.

Alas, it was not to be. Other than the robot-usher and a bunch of green dots on my map, indicating a large number of avatars nearby, the SLliterary region seemed empty.  I never found this phantom-crowd, though I did buy some pants, a waistcoat, and a cool top-hat that will be great for my next trip to Caledon’s countless areas.

The Globe’s season includes a production of Hamlet.  This type of virtual performance provides me with another educational use for SL that I’d not imagined before how students of Shakespeare, from all over the globe (the planet, not the theater) could collaborate on productions, stagecraft, and re-interpretations of Shakespeare.  Such builds provide the answer to some morally and/or pedagogically conservative educators who have begun to attack SL (as I read recently in School Library Journal).  More such obviously educational builds blunt the critique that SL is only about adult activity.

We can now fulfill Hamlet’s belief that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

SL’s Globe is just such a starting place.  And if the Globe was dark when I visited, there are other wholesome places to go and fun to be had…like playing bass with the band on stage at HippiePay! All of the fake world’s a stage…

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: GI Joe Adventure Team Headquarters

It’s a cliché that we geeks tend to collect action figures, spend hours on role-playing games, and hate mainstream activities such as sports and drinking.

Except for the drinking, I’m guilty as charged. NCAA what?  Oh, I’m too busy reading the new catalog from one of the GI Joe clubs…I am a geek, proudly, utterly, completely.  I have long ago embraced my inner geek.

And academia, where geeks abound and rule the roost, is my home. Aside to readers: geeks will tell you, proudly, we are not nerds. Nerds pretend to have knowledge, like the fools Socrates denounced.  Geeks, on the other hand, actually know something, even if it is as obscure as the history of Topper Tigers action figures or the finer points of John Donne’s use of metaphor.

Now, a year on in Second Life, I have quite a bit of geek-knowledge of this invented world.  Lately it occurs to me that our avatars serve exactly the same purpose that my GI Joes and Major Matt Masons did in my (as yet continuing) childhood.  Despite the idea that our “Joes” were not “dolls” who played dress-up like Barbie, we engaged in the same activities. True, we tended to play “Japanese prison camp” instead of “Ken and Barbie go riding in the pink Corvette” but the impulses were the same. We made up stories as we interacted with other kids and their action figures.  At least one neighborhood girl joined the fun, and her Barbie wisely dumped Ken for GI Joe (as did my wife’s Barbie—a sure sign that I had to marry the woman).

In Second Life we buy items for our avatars in the same way we’d buy Barbie a pants-suit or GI Joe a Bazooka.  We revel in our avatars’ inventories, just as we made sure that GI Joe’s footlocker was well stocked for any emergency.

Sadly, research by demographers and marketers show fewer children are playing with traditional toys, and they are doing so for shorter periods of time.  With that goes much imaginative, freeform play in which children invent a world for their toys, making up stories and negotiating rules. I realize that some of my and my friends’ adventures with GI Joe would have today’s hyper-involved, overly worried parents sending us to a psychologist: “NO! Today YOUR GI Joe gets buried up to his neck in sand by Colonel Yamanaka!”

Yet we survived this type of play and lead productive lives.  For today’s children, though, I am not as gloomy as some who write about childhood.  With their avatars in games and virtual worlds, the old story-making urge remains alive.  And we play in these virtual sandboxes with others, just as kids once did in the backyard.  As much as I want children to be outdoors more now, I at least feel that their creativity will survive, if parents will stop over-programming their lives and give them time to just PLAY, with physical toys or an avatar.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Not in the Invented Worlds of Cancun, South Padre Island, or the Bahamas

During our Spring Break, I had time to review my students’ Wiki projects.  They are considering many things aside from Second Life, but I wanted to give readers a sample of their ideas.  This post is longish for this space, but the reactions, uncensored by me, show how 18-22 year-olds (not the prime demographic for Second Life) react to the world.  Of particular interest to me is the reaction of those who already play online games.  Note that each paragraph below represents one student’s reaction.  For more of their work, consult our class Wiki.

Keep in mind, the praise and critiques are those of new Second Lifers; I will be curious to share later feelings by these writers.

Disorientation:

My journey, as does everyone else’s, began at Orientation Island. This place is more or less a gathering of n00bs that continually bang into each other and other various objects.

The best way I can describe Second Life is like the Sims on crack.

Fascinated by this crazy world, I think I just wanted to believe the existence of this. I watch avidly as people interact as if they were there in person. My roommate comes over with disdain and says I am crazy.

Fear and Loathing:

Furthermore, without the consequence of death, criminal punishment, or any other form of accountability for one’s actions, it becomes easier and easier to lose touch with reality and the actual world. For example, whipping out an automatic weapon and inserting bullet after bullet into another avatar within SL cyberspace has no consequence for the person behind the keyboard.

There are many who think SL is doomed to become a cesspool of corrupt businesses. . .and sexual deviants. I think we need to wake up, escape the cave, see the light, and Rage Against the Machine.

I really wanted to dance, and earn some Lindens, so I teleported to places like Hippie Pay and Dance Island. . . .I now saw a mass of digital zombies attempting to mimic the boogie woogie dance moves from Saturday Night Fever, and something didn’t seem right.

Communication:

As I entered the world I was confronted by dozens of “strangers”, people who look legitimately strange. In my first ten minutes “in world”, I met an Alien, a talking dog, and a Kenny (from the show South Park). . . . Second Life is vastly different from any game I have ever played before. In World of Warcraft, one can buy items and use them, but one cannot simply create an item from scratch using programming tools.

As a college sophmore I would be considered against the grain, or even weird, if I didn’t use communication devices such as a cell phone, e-mail, or instant messenger. In my opinion there is a difference between these modes of communication and communicating through SL. I have personal relationships with all of the people listed in my cell phone or on my Instant Messenger Buddy List. When I venture into SL, anyone can chat with me.

The Beauty of Creation:

Second Life is an experience in creation. It is the ability to remake your world and your self in a way not possible in the 1st Life. . . . This unsettles me. As a gamer, I keep using Second Life and expecting there to be a coherent gaming experience. I expect plot. I expect measurable growth. I expect direction. These do not exist in Second Life. It truly is what you make it. . . . I am not even sure if this was not the exact desire of Linden Labs: to make the user feel lost in the face of the realization of near infinite possibility.

And I daresay there is something about an invented world that amplifies its beauty beyond what is found in worlds we were born into and with which we are familiar.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Undisclosed, Trying to Hide Pappy Enoch

Looks like more of Pappy’s “famberly” are coming to Second Life. Just like their literary counterparts, the Snopeses in William Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, the members of the Enoch clan are getting thicker than fleas on a hound dog in the metaverse.

First there was Pappy, then his seldom-seen brother, The Reverend Lucifer Lee Enoch.  Next was Marcus Boo-boo Aurelius Enoch, a tiny white fox avatar, born apparently of Pappy and an unkown mother. Dianna and I remain his guardians while Pappy continues to pay off fees levied in Tombstone’s courthouse for neglect and moral turpitude.

Now comes more serious news for our hillbilly guest-writer: his notorious sister, Jezzabel Enoch. At least I think it is Jezz Enoch.  Pappy came to my office, where I was making my avatar grade mid-term exams. His hands shook as he presented me with this note, left by his still:

Yu tom-cattin’, Shine-swiggin’, pussel-gut, bandy leg, red-nose gut-bukkit! Yu am a dead man if’n yu du not pay mee the $500,000 US Dollurs yu owes mee on errcount o’ yu runnin’ off tu this-hear fake wirld n’ leavin’ me a-holdin’ the bag on the famberly white-lightnin’ operashun.  I dun got busted, went to the pokey, n’ had tu pay the Communwealf’ o’ Virginny that sum o’ munny.  It kum tu 135 Milli-yum Linden Dollurs o’ fake-wirld munny at 270 Linden tu the Greenback.

Now yu pay up qwik-like o’ yu ain’t a-gonna live much longur.  I’s madder’n the time when Big Bertha Bodacious poked out mah eye in the roller-derby.  Now git that-thar munny tu mee (an’ a glass eye-ball) o’ else.  Yo’ forgotten relashun, J.E.D.

Pappy was in a terrible state.

“Wiggly, I reckons I are in fo’ it, if’n that am Jezz, which I reckons it are.  She were bein’ a-courted n’ sparked by ol’ D’Artagnan Doodlebug Dastardly up Greasy-Bottom way wen I lef’ fo’ Secund Life.  That cood egg-splain the ‘D’ aftur the ‘J’ and ‘E.’ She were a Roller Derby seer-lebritee till she lost wun eye agin’ the Cornville C-Cup Crushers.  Yu don’t know this gal!  She dun kilt 3 (may-bee 4) huzz-bins awlreddy. She carries a hawg-leg .44 o’ an AK-47 at awl times, tu.  Chain-saw, tu….oh boo hoo hoo I are a ded man!“

A frown passed over my face.  “Did you really run off on your sister?”

Pappy hung his head. “I got drunk n’ sucked intu the corn-putin’ Web mersheen.  So I reckon I did run-offt.”

“Then you gotta pay her off, Pap.”

Pappy an I did some rapid-fire ciphering to see how long he’d have to camp, nonstop, at HippiePay, to repay the debt.

12.8 years. 

Nice knowing you, Pappy.  I am including a photo of Jezz from Pappy’s scrapbook.  You can check out the entire Enoch Clan from Pappy’s Famberly Tree as well. If you see Jezzabel, contact me so I can warn the Moonshiner. Consider her armed, dangerous, and on a mission of revenge.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: In search of dubloons & long hair

Well, having hair in Second Life has been quite an experience.  Since I’m still wearing my dreadlocks, I must be enjoying them.

Tempest called in some favors (for the columns she’s done for me) to have me model as a pirate for an outfit she designed.  I volunteered (knowing I’d get a free outfit) but Temp had her revenge by insisting that I have long hair.  So I went shopping.

It was easy to settle on a set of dreads. My student Mikhail wears them, and they seemed to be the sort of Second Life accessory for that mash-up of styles and eras in a world where almost anything goes.  Other types of long hair did not do—I tried some demo versions at the shop, but wisely avoided “sensitive pony-tail guy” and, reluctantly “bad comb-over.” I may have to get that one for Halloween…I am thinking of going as Donald Rumsfeld.

I regret that these snapshots vanished.  I plan to go back to the hair store for more…

After I finished shopping, Temp and I posed in the rigging and at the wheel of a pirate ship, as well as on a beach by an outrigger canoe.  My modeling work was a first; I got a lot of instructions such as “turn right” and “stop moving” and “look menacing” and even “arr matey, toss me over your shoulder.”

The dreadlocks are “flexi” which means that they move as the avatar moves; they are not a one-piece helmet of hair that many SLers have when they begin. Flexi hair is not universal; many great non-flexible hairdos are out there and look almost real.  Long flexi hair presents its own problems, too: the strands of hair bisect the avatar’s body and clothing, which creates some bizarre effects.

When I cover SL’s “Hair Fair 2008” I will be sure to go with locks of hair on my head.

I’d like to thank Tenchi for the loan of the tattoos.  I gave them back but I kept Tempest’s pirate outfit.  The eye-patch will be part of my wardrobe for the foreseeable future.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Habitat For Humanity Site, South Richmond

I have spent a lot of time in the past year, in this space, remarking on how Second Life’s avatars are building an online world. But a real-life house is a world for a family, and I’ve just returned from helping to make that sort of world.

In Second Life, building is fairly easy.  With the free tools provided every resident, it’s a matter of making, shaping, and assembling geometrical “prims” into anything desired. Then, with a few more clicks and perhaps with a few Lindens spent, “textures” get added and modified to make the building look good. I enjoy this process, and one of my proudest moments of my past year in Second Life has been my “Frank Lloyd Wrong” glass house, now floating high above Richmond Island (though just below Pappy Enoch’s floating hillbilly travel-trailer).

As proud as my house in Second Life made me, however, the feeling does not compare to the work we are doing for Habitat for Humanity, part of the university’s “Build It” program this year. With my student Brian, shown helping me run a chop-saw, and a group of staff and student volunteers, we made framing parts for a new home, raised roof-trusses into place, put down weather-seal, felt, and shingles, and generally made a group of real-life prims into something that began to look like shelter.

Habitat’s model reminds me of the start-up spirit of Second Life, in fact. It is not a “give away” program. The owners of the new homes will get a reasonable mortgage, but they must put in “sweat equity” on their and other Habitat homes as workers.  Profits from the loans go to make more homes. And so families of modest means get to make a world for themselves.

I plan to volunteer more for Habitat.  I have enough real-life builder’s skills not to be a “noob” on the construction site, and one Second-Life skill comes in very handy: I can see right angles almost automatically, something that happens after lining up enough prims in the virtual world.  As I keep telling my students, many of whom range from an unreasonable fear of Second Life to outright despising it, it need not be “either or” for online engagements.

We must not lose our connection with the world on this side of our screens…yet sometimes we can build something useful and cheaper in virtual spaces. In a future post, I’ll talk about how librarians in SL are doing what they cannot here.  In a virtual space, they too are building a habitat…for information. Here’s a teaser pic from that tour (I’m in the dreadlocks…that is ANOTHER story).

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Sewers of Solarya
By Tempest Homewood, Guest Writer

I don’t have Professor Onomatopoeia’s gift for phony Victorian prose, so I’m going to drop the Dickens and just BEAT THE DICKENS out of Ignatius.

He asked me to jaunt about the sewers of a region know as Solarya.  I like adventuring in Second Life, with its virtual jungles, mountains, and underground rivers.  I do much of this in real life, and it’s clever to see what designers can do with the vast resources available to builders in-world.  For his students’ benefit, I’ll add that SL is not a substitute for these real-life activities; it is a non-competitive alternative to gaming online and I like the way we build our own world around our crazy ideas.

When I heard “sewer” I imagined some horror-story maze, full of evil creatures set to carry me off. Instead, my friend Kikiri and I got lost in a maze of filthy tunnels. I design clothing in SL, adventure wear that is, to put it mildly, “distressed.”  So the two of us walked, crawled, and ran about the Victorian sewers of Solarya.  In the end, it was boring stuff, there being no objective to this maze of well textured stone and wood.  Other than a few (non-moving) giant spiders, there didn’t seem to be much point to it all.  Well, at least I got to see how my ragamuffin Victorian dresses looked in the underworld. I might be unfair to the builders; parts of this maze were clearly unfinished, so there may be more in store for us when all is completed.

Some passages led into the basements of Victorian buildings—future club-houses for sewer gangs? That would be cool—an entire Steampunk-salvage industry exists and it’s a fascinating and somewhat dangerous sub-culture.

But some advice: builders in SL need to provide some sort of peril to these landscapes, at least a goal, and not simply concentrate on their looks. Even a crazy fun-house I found, Cave of Doom, had silly traps and tricks such as a guillotine that would (temporarily) chop off an avatar’s head.  Luckily, a few regions in Second Life offer gaming of a sort—a treasure-hunt with perils and rewards, in the form of (guess what) Linden Dollars.

Girl needs to buy a new dress, after all. Oh, and Iggster?  YOU are going to pay me back by posing as a pirate in some photos for my newest line of clothing.  Hope you like wearing long hair…and tattoos. No shirt permitted. I know you love that look. Heeheehee.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Caledon

Emboldened by the report of the Contessa, your intrepid reporter decided it was high time to see the clockwork park and other marvels of the Steampunk community in Second Life. 

There is an amazing variety of creative work being done in this region and the linked areas (one tantalizing me with the name “Clockwork”).

I rode a cable car through the region, debarking at the “clockwork park” where through transparent panels set in the ground, I could see gears of arcane devices beneath my feet.  That said, I was unable to get to these devices. Kandr Newall, a resident of the area, contacted me and welcomed me to Solarya.  When, however, I asked about access to the subterranean areas, he remarked, casually, that “In this setting, those colorful crystals you see are a form of currency. So a vast fortune is being burned in the furnaces. . . . Easy access would run contrary to the value of the fuel.”

Given my limited schedule for exploration, and the ominous sign I came across in a basement, I have alerted the adventurous Miss Tempest Homewood, whose mission in Second Life is adventure, to explore the hidden secrets of this recreation of a 19th century that never was. 

That said, I could not resist a brief excursion into the unknown beyond the sign. I found myself in a maze of Victorian Sewers, and thereupon forwarded a landmark to Miss Homewood by Linden Post.

She will write a dispatch for these pages presently. My conversation with Mr. Newall closed amicably, if a bit ominously…

Ignatius Onomatopoeia: Miss Homewood tends to ask forgiveness, not permission, in such cases.

Kandr Newall chuckles.

Kandr Newall: I would appreciate her restraint, then. The furnaces of Clockworx are the heart of our infrastructure. Our ‘lectric wires and gas network depend on a steady flow of passion crystals.

Ignatius Onomatopoeia: Quite so. Sadly, it will only be a matter of time before individuals risk all for such riches….

For my part, on to the neighboring area, called Clockwork…

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

by Dianna Defiant, Guest Writer
Location: Our Virtual Advice Desk

Dear Di,

I am being singled out for teasing because of my blinging jewelry and other accessories.  [Iggy’s note—“bling” is a flashing effect found on many SL items]

People I do not even know, at clubs, will call me a noob or even a “blindtard” and tell me I’m blinding them.  I want to fit it, but I don’t know what established residents think of bling or how much of it is enough!

Please help!

Sparklegurl

Dear Sparklegurl….

The rule - as in RL - is LESS IS MORE. One little bling is prob OK, but 6? I do know that a LOT of jewelry & accessories in SL have that feature, but most of them can be turned off with a chat command. Look in the folder you received when you bought the jewelry/boots/whatever and see if there aren’t some instructions on how to turn it off. Usually a simple ‘/bling off’ will do it. And I don’t know a lot about Sims and lag & all that - but I hear that too much bling, etc… can cause lag at highly populated places, especially when everyone has it on. If Rainman says you’re “very sparkly very twinkly” then your best bet would to be to tone it down a bit and see what reaction you get. Let your personality shine thru and get you attention instead of your BLING!!

XXOO
Di

Questions for Di?  Iggy will forward them to her! E-mail iggyo -at- mac -dot- com

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Location: Caledon

Armed with my wits, a tophat, cape, cane, and tinted pince-nez, I imagined myself rather the dashing specimen of late-Victorian manhood as I arrived in the central plaza of the original Caledon region.

This famous part of Second Life was made to simulate a 19th century that never was.  Based upon a subgenre of science-fiction known as “Steampunk,” Caledon adds touches of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to the rows of stately homes that would be well suited to Monument Avenue or the older parts of the Fan District.

Miss Giselle Bristol was so kind as to join me for my initial excursion.  Miss Bristol, a lady-journalist (see her quaintly named “Fashion Mafia“ ) covers the world of virtual fashion, and she may soon be a guest writer for these pages.  Miss Bristol appeared in a stunning pink gown and, after I tipped my hat to her, we strolled along the parkways of Caledon.  I had decided it too crass to fly in these regions…not only would the soles of my shoes be visible to passers-by beneath me, but it would be improper to expose Miss Bristol’s neither-garments to the hue-and-cry of the citizenry.

One must not cause a scandal.

Earlier, and a bit sore of foot, I had boarded a small steam-powered tram that chanced by as I considered the wares on offer at the mercantile establishments near my arrival-point.
This conveyance permits one easy access to various regions in the Caledonians’ many areas. Perhaps it is my lack of worldly experience, gentle readers, but I have yet to see a public transit system in Second Life!

After meeting Miss Bristol, we entered an estate-agent’s tastefully appointed offices to find that one can purchase an entire castle for the sum of 2000 Linden Dollars!  By Jove, I’d rather fancy being able to do that in my real life.

Your intrepid writers pressed on, and soon we chanced upon a Contessa!  Well, at least that was the well-dressed lady’s first name.  I hoped that I was not too improper as I called her that, thinking that perhaps it was her title.  For the sake of propriety, I shall assume just that in this entry.

The Contessa told us of her reasons for spending time in Caledon,  noting “I am actually quite new but hoping to eventually own land in Caledon. I feel comfortable here.”

When the Contessa asked of our reasons for visiting, I admitted a certain devil-may-care attitude and said that I was seeking adventure!  I wanted to find out if there were a dangerous side to life in Caledon…and the obliging Contessa directed us to the sewers of Solarya, where there is also a “clockwork park.”

We forged on….

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts