On myself.

On my shorts.

On my short shorts… And I’m talking really short shorts.

On the friggin’ CROTCH of my really short shorts.

THE WAX IS RED.  On my light heather grey shorts.

Let’s recap. I’ve just spilled hot, blood red wax on the crotch of my light grey short shorts.

And its not even on the frontal crotch area, where you could point to it and be all “Haha, that’s just wax.” No, it’s in the area where if someone notices it, it will look like I’ve had a feminine hygiene accident, so they will never comment on it so you can never clarify the situation. Though if anyone other than my husband is looking at that part of my crotch in shorts that short, I’m likely to punch them upside the head.

Lord I hope I can get it out.. those are my gym shorts.

I also got wax all over my the inner part of my largely nude thigh (tres short shorts) and on BOTH of my feet, but it didn’t hurt in the slightest so whateves.

Yes, this was posted so you can laugh at my dumb ass.

P.s., I’m one classy bitch.

<3 Alexis
(Posted from my Android, because its better than your iPhone)

It’s a virtual world, which means nothing is real, so why are we holding so tightly to the realistic constructs of physics, weather and time? Why do all houses and stores have to have the basic all enclosing walls, doors and roofs. Are we warding off mud flinging hurricanes? No. Is it going to get cold enough at “night” for dew to settle all over my nicely folded pretend clothes? No. Does gravity exist? No. Unless its turned on, and come on, really, who turns it on? Nobody. So why do houses have to have support beams or even be touching the ground? Why can’t a house just fly 4 meters off the ground, over your Olympic sized swimming pool? Why cant beds and chairs hover? Gravity is a myth in virtual worlds that is held onto for no reason at all, other than the fact that human minds resist change.

The sheer size and scale of things is ridiculous. If you can’t stand at one end of your bedroom and see the other side without jacking up your viewer distance to 2983475 meters, there is something wrong. Nobody needs a kitchen that is 15 meters square. Nobody. Doors are not 5 meters high. That’s just stupid. Fireplaces that you can fit a small village into? COME ON! 10 meter ceilings? You need a smack. Look at the size of the average avatar you are building to house and build something that is not so massive that they’d need to take a break on the way from the dinner table to the bathroom. In no way is 30×30 meters a SMALL house.

Privacy is an issue in real life, both form a personal and a legal standpoint. Very few people want their neighbour’s children watching them wipe their butts, enjoy bedroom athletics or wash their dangley bits. Lesser privacy Infractions include watching soemone change, seeing someone barf, or just general creepy staring. In Second Life people still strive for the same security with tintable one-way windows and lockable doors. Thing is, anyone who has been in Second Life for more than 2 days knows how to cam through things, and anyone with a half decent viewer can De render prims and cam spy their way into anything. I do it all the time. Also, what are you doing that’s so private? Your boobs you hide in your shower have been seen by the skin/shape maker. Your hilariously generous dong you hide in your tinted dressing room has been fondled my many a pervert and shaped lovingly by its designer. The sex anims on your overpriced pixel porn bed are overused and can be tested out anywhere, so everyone knows exactly what you look like: poorly meshed together because the anims dont fit your av size and frankly your body mesh was never designed to bend like that. The only real reason I could see for privacy is for CREATORS who dont want people seeing their creations and stealing the ideas before they are released, and most of them have the good sense to have scripted privacy things that boot avatars out of the area or send them home.

And what is becoming one of my biggest pet peeves as a builder: Actual usability.
Behold a quote. I am a literary genius:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” – William Morris

Lets step back for a second and look at what Humans versus avatars are able to and actually need to do.

Eating : Humans YES. Avatars NO.
Sleeping : Humans YES. Avatars NO.
Personal hygiene : Humans YES. Avatars NO.
Evacuation of bodily waste : Humans YES. Avatars NO.

So if avatars dont eat or sleep or shower or poop,why the hell do I need to build kitchen or a bedroom or a bathroom?
Aside from the kitchen, eliminating these rooms eliminates all preconceived privacy issues. Yes a bathroom or a bedroom or a kitchen can be beautiful, but usually, they are a poorly laid out, unattractive, waste of space and/or prims. and more often than not, these spaces are never used aside from taking a photo or 2 or if you have some weird poop fetish. I’m accepting of most fetishes, but I stop at toilet related erotica.

So, going back to the quote, if its not useful, and its not beautiful, why build it, but it, or own it? As I see it, residential Second Life boils down to a few essential things. Having a work area that is somewhat shielded from view so that you can build hair/shoes/skins/houses/cars/WHATEVER in peace and seclusion. Having a somewhat private area where you can do your thing without all the world peeping at your pooter. Having a public space so that you can TP your friends in and show them your newest hair/shoes/whatever, sit and drink pretend coffee, or watch streaming youtube videos of cats. And last but not least, a patio overlooking your pool/backyard/horse farm/outdoor area. I label these areas: work room/studio, bedroom, living room, patio and yard. Last night I scrapped the conventional housing norms and designed a second life home based around these 5 areas and it was so so much nice than other things I’ve build that try to conform to first life necessities. I challenge all builders to try this out.

I’m not judging other people’s work, at least not other serious good designers. I’m just saying what my views are on Second Life architecture. And really I’ve been here over 5 years. I started building about 2 months after I joined so I think I’m allowed to have an opinion on these things. I’m not saying I’m the SL architecture police, I’m just saying what I see, and how I feel. I am not going to cite other SL architects that I admire, because for the last few years, I’ve avoided seeking out SL architects because I dont want to subconsciously copy other people.

‘- SANDBOX IS CLOSED’

!!!!!!!!

What do you mean, closed!  I pretty much LIVE there! I’m there 23/7! The only sandbox I’ve ever sen that’s not full of griefers laggy moons and the dregs of SL!  Nooooooooooooooooo!  I cry.

Well, thanks for the good times Xen, I really appreciated it while it lasted<3. Anyone know of another GOOD sandbox that's not all nooby and greiferey, and us actually still open?

In other news: I saw a bike infested with honey bees today

Don't Sit Here

<3 Alexis
(Posted from my Android, because its better than your iPhone)

And as far as my string doll-ing goes, I’ve mad a hand-full of them in a variety of colors. They are hard to make when you have 3 cats around who want to give you attention and mountains of cat hair. The dolls I have are all a wee bit fluffy.

Wow being home like this is so much like a flash back to my life 12 years ago: living with my parents, having to keep reasonable sleeping patterns, and having to ask my parents to go anywhere and do anything. I’m bored out of my mind… I can’t get their monitor to work properly and their scanner appears to be borked and… gah! I love my parents but I can’t wait to go back to a place where I can get around more easily and where my computer works… not perfectly, but very well.

Yesterday we were in Vancouver to drop my husband at the airport and I whined at my parents until they agreed to take me down to “the wall”, instead of just directly back to the ferry. All in all it was pretty impressive, but what I thought was really sad was that, though hundreds of people came out and wrote all over the wall about the greatness of the city and how its such a lovely place, and boo-hoo rioters, everyone was ignoring the homeless people sitting right at their feet, in front of the wall. Kind of shameful if you ask me. Regardless, I’m glad I went to see it. I took lots of photos of the wall, of people signing it, and of the homeless people being totally ignored, which I’ll post online after I get a chance to properly edit them.

I don’t have any other blathering to add, so i shall go.

Anyone remember that show, Queer as Folk, that ran from 2000 – 2005?  Yeah, I liked the show for the content, and the plethora of hot guys to stare at (if men can oolge us, I intend on oogling right back). But my favourite thing, aside from Brian Kinney himself, was the loft he lived in.  It was stunning.  So I’m trying to replicate it.  Mine has a bit of an updated, darker edge to it, but I lusted over the floorplan and the furniture, and the awesome raised bed area for so long, that I decided that I must have it!  I researched it and I thing I’ve gotten it pretty bang on.   Very excited.

Yes my finger still hurts!

Till next time!

<3 Alexis
(Posted from my Android, because its better than your iPhone)

I have made some earrings! Little crocheted. Voodoo/string dolls. Pain-painstakingly shadow-mapped with the shittiest program for sculpts EVER, 3xd max. Nothing lines up.  So after much tweaking and swearing, they’re done.  I’ll post a link to them in the marketplace when I get them listed.  I’m also making the dolls in real life, because I have 21 hours on a plane in my near future and they don’t require knitting needles or crochet hooks, because, you know, knitting needles are terrorists go-to weapon of choice.

<3 Alexis
(Posted from my Android, because its better than your iPhone)

So, in my quest to start up a prefab store I’ve been buying crapload of sculpt-maps.. I think my inventory has probably doubled over the last month with new shadow-maps, sculpt-maps, and sculpted preview prims. My favourite thing to buy as of late is land/treraform-ish sculpt-maps. Everyone builds flat houses – flat houses for flat land. To that I say NO! In RL, unless you live on the Prairies, or in Ticky-Takcy-Box-suburban-hell, your land is probably not flat. Flat sucks. Flat is le BORING. So now I’m building everything on teraformed bases. Hillsides, cliff-sides, dug into the ground, underground, around a cliff, little Islands, mountain tops, floating environments, etc.

Tera-sculpts usually bounce AVs out of houses or they fall through the land, or whatever, making it necessary to phantom-child them with script, and build base invisi-prims for AV’s to walk on. There are 2 ways you can use a PC script: 1) If the sculpt you want to use is CMT perm you just use its UUID in the script, 2) if the sculpt is only C/T you need to include the map itself inside each prim to be able to use a PC script. My issue is that my first, and favourite, set of teraform maps is only C/T, and you aren’t allowed to redistribute the maps (obv) and the creator won’t let me have the UUIDs, so they are, essentially, useless to me. This makes me very sad. Say good bye to your island homes for a while, until I find some other islandey terraform maps.

And don’t tell me to just include them as unlinked phantoms. I hate unlinked house bits. If its not all stuck together I’m going to have to spend years doing customer support for people who can’t figure out how to put their house together, and who can’t figure out how to move their house by surround selecting, ect. I prefer to build for the dumbest case scenario.

This sounds like its spiralling into the land of Q_Q. I’m actually really excited to do this! In the works, I’ve already got a weird moderny house on a mountain top/rock island, with a floor for a front door, and a huge patio. That is possibly the most unhelpful and confusing description EVER. I win! I’ll start posting photos as I finish things, and if anyone wants pre-opening previews, let me know.

For those of you that don’t get the Ticky Tacky reference: look on YouTube, or if you are far too cool (read: lame) to listen to “old” music” here is a cover by Linkin’ Park. Oh, and apparently is the theme song from “Weeds;” I didn’t know that. And, yes I know the song says on the hillside, ignore that bit becasue its runs counter to the point I was trying to make :p

A gem of irony: after looking into it, I actually genuinely LIKE the houses that the song originally referred to, so I’m going to build some inspired by them. Possibly on a hillside

More on the building front: Id really REALLY love to do commercial interior design. I’ve always loved doing and redoing the inside of my stores, and Id love to be able to do that for other people. I believe that a store has to sell itself as well as the products, and to do that it has to have its own voice and be individualistic, and I’d love love LOVE to help people come up with their own vibe and their own feeling, so that they can showcase what they are all about as well as their products. If you want help with that or to see what I can do, PM me or email me (lots of contact info in one of the side bars).

I’m also considering making some tattoo layer make-ups, because,lets face it, my SKINS weren’t great, my make-up is what people bought my skins for. That’s ok, because Make-up is what i really wanted to do. I love make-up, I don’t care about skin.

I’m considering uniting all of my different ‘brands’ under one name, because Im tired of having to make all kinds of different branding for everything I do. I’d love to have one store with a unified theme and to just be able to tie it all together nicely.