The Demise of an SL Institution

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. It is also the first day without a new blogpost on My Avatar Name is Apmel, a SecondLife institution that has been accompanying and guiding us residents since 2006.

"She was in Paris" by Sergey Rybakov

Mr. Apmel Goosson Esq., enfante terrible, universal genius, philosopher, rebel, blogger, author, artist, cartoonist, etc., etc. and the honored 2011 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bock McMillan Art Foundation (a part of the BMcM Corporation), has for some selfish reason decided that after 10,000 blogposts enough is enough. He did so without due consideration of the significant emotional distress and soul-wrenching turmoil he thereby causes to his faithful readers.

However, I must begrudgingly admit that my bosom buddy, of course, has the right to make such a decision and move on to new endeavors. In a heart-to-heart conversation, Apmel promised that we would find him on other media platforms but did not want to specify saying "Only the future can tell! Besides I won't leave SL, my avatars would never forgive me :)".

Thank you for your dedicated work through these fifteen years, Apmel! We are all looking forward to seeing your future work.

BMcM Corps Proudly Presents Samm Quendra and DJ Kahvy with Host RickJ at SP, today 3-5 PM SLT

Be there or be square!

Flaunt your pride!

Absolutely Fabulous!

Thank you DJ Butch with host Pook and all of you wonderful people who attended the BMcM-sponsored  event at Second Pride today.

Butch was on fire, Pook was gracious and we all had a lot of fun.

I hope to see you all again soon during the upcoming week! Happy Pride!

BMcM Proudly Presents DJ Butch at SP, today 1-3 PM SLT

BMcM (that's me and this blog thingy) are happy to give you (the LGBT+ community in SecondLife and our allies) the oh-so-sexy, the unruly and the mischievous DJ Butch Diavolo.

Where: Main Stage at the Second Pride sim
When: 1-3PM SLT
What to wear: No shirt & no shoes and leave your problems at home!

My thanks to sweet husband Tomais Ashdene for taking and editing the green screen picture of the awesome Butch and to sweet Kahvy for making the fabulous poster for this event. 

Grand Opening of The Northmead Gallery

The Bock McMillan Art Foundation 

(a part of the BMcM Corporation) 

and the artists 

WayneNZ 

JJ Goodman 

and 

Tomais Ashdene

Welcome you all to the opening of the new erotic gallery at Southern Charm today

From the invitation on Facebook:

"An intrepid trio of SecondLife photographers invites you to an opening at their very private space, the Northmead Gallery at Southern Charm for a showing of gay male erotic art. (or as Kahvy puts it, "dicks, dicks, dicks!") (or as Bock puts it, "a celebration of the male form) (or as JJ puts it, "our brush of love!") (or as Wayne calls it, "Bowchickie wow wow!) (or as RickJ said, "Meow.")

The party starts at 1:00 PM SLT, and DJ Kahvy will be pumping (get it? Pumping!) out some hot dance tunes.

This is just for the fun of it since we had a great time doing al these photos, and we've a cool space to show our art in the rundown city block that makes up the Gallery. Feel free to wander and enjoy some of special places we've built into the venue.

Hope to see you there!

Disclaimer: male/male nudity and sexual acts are portrayed in the photos. No small animals were harmed in the making of these photographs. Enter at your own risk."

Landmark to The Northmead Gallery!

Content Creators, Listen Up!

I got a request from my friend Kahvy Smith to help, him and his husband Garrett, with this call for content creators and promoting the upcoming Easter Egg Hunt at The Land of Rainbows.

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"Want to promote your product? Your store? Get some free attention and traffic? Keep reading! 

The Land of Rainbows Gay Hangout wants to invite YOU to our annual Easter egg hunt!

Become a participant and let people hunt for your eggs! 

We will be hiding Easter eggs all over our sim and are hoping YOU will help us give out cute gifts to our visitors! Let them search for the eggs! 

What do we offer? 


🐥 A fun and entertaining event for your (potential) customers from april 1 - april 18 (the day after Easter) 

🐥 Entering is Free of charge. You do NOT have to pay anything to join! 

🐥 Well visited destination guide featured sim that draws over 100 unique visitors a week under normal circumstances

🐥 We will list this event in the destination guide (Provided Linden Lab picks up the suggestion, we cannot control that but have been successful in the past.)

🐥 Regular promotion in-world and on social media before and during the event

🐥 Your logo in promotions for the event if you like.

🐥 Full freedom as to what you want to give away (* please see notes below on adult content) 

He's My SecondLife

I was modeling for my hubby Tomais today, and has become my habit I take snapshots and play with Windlight settings while he photographs us and touches them up with Photoshop.

"He's my SecondLife_1" by BMcM

"He's my SecondLife_2" by BMcM

These two turned out rather nicely I think.

Sacrilege!

Oscar Wilde, our revered great-great-grand uncle, once said "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness."

As the spectacular content creator and amazing fashion designer that I am, I was of course deeply honored when I encountered this bastardized version of my Internationally renowned "The Jester's Hat" by BMcM™ at the Second Pride festival yesterday.

But I must also admit I find this modified version extremely garish and very l-o-u-d and not at all sublime and sensual as my original hat is. In the background of the picture below you can see Petr Vanbeek modelling the - in this context - muted and sublime original.

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Nah seriously, it was really fun and entertaining to see Kahvy and Garrett give the audience a preview of what they believe may be the version I will launch for Pride next year.

A Daring Fashionista (Updated)

I don't know this beautiful young man, but I must admit that I love him already! Update: I have since posting learned that the brave young man is none other than Mr Dozer G. Dragoone.

Look at his style, grace and exquisite taste, the strong and vibrant energy he exudes with his attitude of "Fuck you, I know I am beautiful!". He must truly be one of that rare breed, a true fashionista. Not one to follow the flock and bold enough to make his own statement.

As you may - or perhaps maybe not - notice the stunning and bold young man is sporting "The Jesters Hat in Multicolored Rhinestone" from BMcM™ (a part of the BMcM™ Corporation), this year's gift at the Bock in SecondLife booth at the Second Pride Festival.

Photo courtesy of NakedCarl Paneer, blog NakedCarl.

The GA WinterFest is Here!

I am late to the party as I have been over in Copenhagen being soothed and commiserated upon by my BFF Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark. We share a mutual dislike for that other Scandinavian queen. So Margrethe invited me over to her digs at Amalienborg Castle for a few days.

We spent two wonderful days and a night together sharing horror stories and eating fast food and snacks in our pajamas only waited upon by a former who has gone completely deaf.

But I a dallying, on with the real subject of this post, the GA WinterFest that started yesterday and will continue until December 21st.
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The theme of this years WinterFest is "Gay Archipelago 2034" and it will consist of 10 whole days of events around the clock.

For a schedule to all the events please visit the GA WeBlog. You will find the events of the day listed in the column to the left.

Take this ride to get to the GA WinterFest (SLurl).

Once you are there, please visit Tomais' and my booth which you will find here (This will only work once you are there.)

Don't forget to pick up your free gift from "Bock in SecondLife"!

The Olympic Games, Russia & Putin

I was tipped about this post by John Aravosis on the AMERICAblog by the longtime Bock in SecondLife reader, my dear brother, Dejerrity Mycron.

Despite Dej's present sufferings in an old Manhattan building with a malfunctioning boiler and a worthless managing company in the midst of the coldest winter in New York for ages, my lovely and loving brother takes the time and makes the effort to send me tips. Isn't it clear from that fact alone, that the man is completely loveable?

Oh guys, he is single too at the moment so if you would want to meet this gruff diamond in disguise just drop a notecard on my profile and I may set you up for an introduction.

Send your notecards to The McMillan Matchmaking Agency (a part of the BMcM Corporation), c/o Bock McMillan.

If you pass my scrutiny, I may introduce you! First come, first served! 
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The AMERICAblog; "How Vladimir Putin sent 'Brand Russia'  into the toilet". The post starts like this:

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has done more to harm the image of Russia internationally than anyone in a generation.

Putin’s baby, the 2014 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia in just under two weeks, was meant to demonstrate to the world that Russia had entered the modern age.

Then a funny thing happened. The world actually paid attention to Russia, and found it to be a third-world cesspool run by a despot.

If Brand Russia had already been bruised by Putin’s reign, in the past 12 months it’s been utterly destroyed."

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I hope "Little Father" Putin reads it and takes notice, but that may be a vain wish.

Something Old, Something New...

Before I go back to my playing with myself and test if Bock may finally be over the problems we have had lately I would like to take a moment to honor two SecondLife blogs and their bloggers.

The first one is the oldest Swedish SecondLife blog, My Avatar´s Name Is Apmel, which is owned and operated by my bosom buddy Apmel Goosson & alts (in his first life also known as +Lennart Nilsson)..

Today the blog celebrates it´s sixth blogoversary and having reached 5,000 posts. The number of pageviews should be close to 700,000 by now as the blog reached the 600,000 mark on March 26, 2011.

My Avatar´s Name Is Apmel has previously been honored by The Bock McMillan Art Foundation´s (a part of the BMcM Corporation) lifetime achievement award on March 26, 2011, read why here SecondLife Culture Blog Honored.

I for one am looking forward to following Apmel and alts on their adventures in SecondLife the next six years also, It is - and will remain - an obligation for every SecondLife blogger to read what Apmel has to say about our life and times.

On the other end of the scale I also wish to congratulate my friend Benja Aquila, who started blogging just recently, on hos blog Benja Aquila´s Second Life. The blog passed it´s first 5,000 pageviews yesterday!

Congratulations to both the blog and the blogger, I am so looking forward to still be a faithful follower when you pass 500,000 pageviews!

C O L O R S at KMADD

Soon after I had logged inworld I got a notice in the KMADD Group about a fashion show. I haven´t been to one of these events for a very long time, so I thought to myself "Hell, why not?" and off I went.

The lag was of course atrocious in the beginning, but once they had restarted the sim things got much better. When I got back to the show I grabbed the first empty seat I saw hoping that no one was already sitting there.

As it turned out I ended up besides this very interesting looking man, who´s name was Dark Hennesy.

Following my usual urge, I checked out his profile and realized he was a part of the DeeTaleZ (SLurl) fashion company and actually partnered to that company´s owner and designer Steffi Villota. No wonder he looked so interesting.

Suddenly someone sat down on my right and I knew his name already, it was Frolic Mills of The Best of Second Life (BOSL).

So here we are sitting all lined up and hobnobbing, Frolic of BOSL, Bock of BMcM and Darki of DeeTaleZ. I am sure the other two had never heard of or seen me before, although I have seen Frolic around SecondLife several times earlier.

Da guyz, fashionistas

The show began with a few words from the MAD in KMADD, Maddox DuPont, who welcomed us and told us about the various designers in the evenings show. His whole style for the evening was well suited to the name of the show.

I will start by showing you the male looks, I got most of them on camera (except the last one due to a crash). The comments under each picture are my immediate thoughts when I saw the models.

Good only for a sports themed party

Oh well....ok...I guess...

Seen it before

Beautiful (This is the men´s look I liked best)

Ughhhh! Yikes! You cannot be serious? Imaginative and the blue is nice.

Yawnnn!

I totally hated the boots and the visor

All in all not too bad, but I must admit that I am still not particularly thrilled by mesh-details in men´s fashion.

As I have probably told you before, but I much prefer clothing that adapts to the body instead of the other way around. I also like it when clothes flow like natural material (cloth, leather etc.) instead of appearing like one is wearing armored plate as a gladiator or a knight in medieval times.

Now for the women´s looks. As usual these were more imaginative, creative, funny and beautiful.

Beautiful

Nice colors but whats new?

Fun - but still hate the Trekkie visor

Woohoo - this and one of my jester hats, perfect!

Very classy! My favorite in the women´s looks.

Huh, nice red but then what...?

Nice but old

Hostile Takeover Bid for Apple Inc?

The financial markets all over the world today went rampant with rumors that the SecondLife-based BMcM Corporation may be launching a hostile takeover bid for Apple Inc. This news followed the recent news that Apple Inc is now worth more than Microsoft and Google combined or the GDP of the Kingdom of Sweden for one year.

The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm, prince of Cascade Falls and filthy rich owner of BMcM, smiled enigmatically and declined to comment on this rumor when he was confronted in the company of a stunningly beautiful man in a sordid backstreet bar in the ill-reputed  Zindra Region.

Prince Wild Zepp, the official spokesman for the McMillan household, only snorted "Ridiculous!" and then turned his back to this reporter and refused to comment further.

This "tactic of silence" from the McMillan household is well known from similar business deals in the past. We will of course keep you updated as this story as it evolves.

(...and if you did not guess it already, it´s a joke...)

Warning to Friends

Calm, cool and collected - or just a very poor self image?

The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and prince of Cascade Falls, has - finally - started building again.

His head is buzzing with exceptional ideas on fashion accessories, candle sticks, lounge chairs and many other essentials for a good life in SecondLife. Frequent visits have already been made to the Textures R´Us store in search of good fabrics and other textures.

As the laird came late to building and has been preoccupied  with other matters lately his building skills are rusty - to say the least. If you are online when he hits a tight spot you can almost be certain to get a call.

Yesterday he managed to disrupt the lives of Adrina Welders, cobbler extraordinaire with the shop AW Designs, and Chade Dagger, well known studly club owner of Erotes, when he got stuck and remembered there was a way to do things but could not recall how. Adrina was hastily transported from whatever she was busy with to come and inspect and aid the laird.

The laird also made a call to SecondLife live chat for support when he for twenty desperate minutes thought he had blown away half of his humble living accommodations. Luckily he stayed calm, cool and collected and was experienced in all things SecondLife enough to do a relogg before calling up a rollback of the sim by Linden Lab. When he returned after the relogg everything seemed to be back in place (it must have been a camera thingy).

All the members of the McMillan-clan are up on their toes and ready to start the production-lines again. They are all certain that this surge will establish the BMcM Corporation as one of the leading enterprises in SecondLife.

Please be patient, he is crazy but he means well most of the time!

The Laird Inspects Installation Art

"No Name Yet" Installation art by Kandinsky Beaumont

The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and prince of Cascade Falls, deigned to honor the Imagine peacefest at Solace Island with his presence on Sunday evening.

During his unusually lengthy visit the laird took the time to inspect a piece of installation art that had been partly sponsored by The Bock McMillan Art Foundation (a part of the BMcM Corporation). The installation was made by Kandinsky Beaumont, hostess of the event, and met with the highest approval of the laird.

The peacefest was a great success with entertainment by the singer and songwriter POL Arida and the fabulous group DRUM.

All and sundry of the existing art mob in SecondLife passed through the party during the many hours that the laird was there, but he most appreciated the presence of his beloved sister Millimina Salamander whom he had not met with in a long while.

Named Avatars 3

Today it is my great pleasure to let my buddy Apmel tell us about how he named his avatar - and his host of co-avatars.

As you perhaps already know Apmel is a prominent figure in the virtual art world of SecondLife. His blog "Min avatar heter Apmel" ("My Avatar´s Name is Apmel") is also the oldest existing Swedish SecondLife blog and the distinguished recipient of the prestigious lifetime achievement award from The Bock McMillan Art Foundation (a part of theBMcM Corporation).

The Apmel Trinity - from the left Meerson, Ibbetson and Goosson

"When I registered my first ava I first looked up a surname that ended with “-son”... it just happened to be Ibbetson and Apmel as first name, which was simply a reversal of one of my nicknames at work - "Lempa" instead of Lennart.

Later, I wanted to have a name ending in “-sson”, two s´s, and more Swedish I thought .. while I kept the first name. Apmel Goosson plain and simple with everything that it has come to mean...

When I created the next avatar, that was first conceived as a pure backup, the choice for a surname happened to fall on Meerson.

Eventually these alternate versions of Apmel developed, as several of you already know. 

Apmel Ibbetson was modeled using pictures of myself taken just before my sixtieth birthday in real life and hey presto, he became Uncle IB. The "last name" IB comes from the fact that my primatar initially was determined to promote his RL-activity, "Indexkompaniet Bokförlag" (The Index Company Publishers) and started an Index Company book café in-world where the group´s members were called IB-agents (Yes, I did have the (for Swedes) well known IB-affair in memory, and liked the ambiguity).

Apmel Meerson quickly turned into “Kludden” (the daub). An inexperienced young cousin to Apmel who is finding his way around in Second Life. Daub rapidly strengthened my interest in the virtual arts.

At long last Apmelina Slingshot came along and proved to be the sister of Apmel that Apmel´s dad never had. Apmelina rapidly extended my old-fashioned (albeit narrow) musical taste in a more contemporary direction - with a little help from Milli, I readily admit. :))

 

And the last (latest?) avatar that I have acquired is a banker who originally was of the same indeterminate sex and age as the name I gave it, "Apmelsprivatabankman" (Apmel´s-private-banker). I refuse to use the ugly surname Resident that automatically and not so amusingly came with it. This avatar later developed into a beautiful woman in her fifties. I am hoping she will bring order to the Apmellian finances :))"

It Isn´t Rocket Science

Kids can do it well, so can you if you only try!

Hey excuse me, but I am Swedish and hugging is our favorite pastime. We hug a lot, no one is safe anywhere.

I am getting totally disheartened by the lousy and sloppy hugging going on in SecondLife. I have only met two outstanding huggers, my Ars and my son in-law Janttu. Guyke is getting much better - much thanks to Janttu´s training , I am sure - and so is my brother in-law Andrey, but the rest of you desperately need lessons.

It really isn´t rocket science, as the headline states. Hugging just takes a bit of concentration and knowing who does what. So here is a short excerpt from the "Hugging 101" class at "The Lairds School of Animation" (a part of the BMcM Corporation)

1. Someone sends you an invitation to hug.(Sending the invitation and standing still is pretty much what the hugger needs to do.)
2. Check - and double check - who you the hug and decide if you want to hug the person or not.
3. If you do not want to hug that person, click the "Decline"-button and say something nice about why not in local chat. (I cannot stress enough - nice!)
4. If you however decide to accept the hug, follow these steps
a) Locate the person who wants to hug you.
b) Go stand in front of that person.
c) Make sure you line up properly and squarely in front of that person (not sideways, but facing them directly).
d) Check - and double check - that your AO (Animation Overrider) and any dance-HUD is turned off..
e) NOW - and not before - is the time to click the "Accept"-button.
f) Enjoy the hug, do not rush through it or stop it prematurely. Just go with the feeling. (If you feel that 1-2 minutes of your precious time is too much to sacrifice, it is better to decline the hug than cutting it short.)

Please note:
1. It is always the huggee´s privilege to decide whether or not they want to join in a hug or not but it is also the huggee´s responsibility to make sure that it turns out well by following the measures above.
2. The guidelines given above work for all animations in SecondLife (kissing, dancing, f**king and getting bitten by noob-vampires, whatever).
3. To avoid the noob-vampires, get the Garlic Necklace. Wear it and click the appropriate button and then take it off. You are now pretty safe from the noob vampires. (If you cannot find that necklace, send me an IM and I will send it to you.)

Hugs are healing!

The Jesters Hat Goes To Second Pride

As the proud creator of the fashion forward Jesters Hat, only recommended for the most daring of fashionistas, I was happy to find two pictures of it on Jeff Ellsworth's blog.

I should have known that some of the gay men would understand my vision.

Ernst Maven in The Jesters Hat (a bit toned down to suit his outfit). Photo by Jeff Ellsworth

Themba in The Jesters Hat - rainbow edition. Photo by Jeff Ellsworth

As some of you know this fashionable hat is the base of the BMcM Corporation, everything started with this hat. It is the creation to which I own my fame or infamy!

Only two other people loved it before, my Ars and Millimina, and that may well be because they love me too.

Myself in my creation

Too Hard and Too Thick

This is not a picture of the traumatizing bedding

...and no, don´t you even go there, this post is about nothing other than hotel pillows, but you are otherwise correct in assuming that those two specific objections were never going to come from me.

The primatar of the Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and CEO of the BMcM Corporation, spent last night in a substandard hotel bed in real life.

In the hotels that he usually frequents guests are always offered a selection of at least three different types of pillows, not so in the one he stayed in last night. There were two pillows, but both where the same - way too hard and too thick. The laird - as any other gentleman - prefers flat, soft and downy pillows.

After some anguish, pain and rolling around half the night he finally fell asleep, only too wake up in the morning feeling like he had broken his neck.

The laird is now seriously contemplating turning over this matter to his legal staff for possible action against the hotel, but perhaps a good nights sleep on his own pillows may make him reconsider.