Learning (More) English

"The curmudgeon" - Photography by Jill Greenberg

I stumbled over a word I had never encountered before in a comment on Joe.My.God. today.

Curmudgeon, cur·mudg·eon [ker-muhj-uhn]
noun
a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.

It is going to be my new favorite word for a while, so some of you better get used to it because I will probably use it all the time.

"Millimina dear, what the fuck happened? You are such a curmudgeon today!"

"Put a sock in it, PetGirl, you are being a f***king curmudgeon!"

"Apmel, buddy, go jump in the lake and simmer down. you are such a curmudgeon!"

"Loo, were you born a curmudgeon or did someone drop you on your head early in life?"

"Don´t be a curmudgeon, Ziggy, it doesn't make you look better!"

DJ World - 4th Anniversary

 
 

Oh what a night it was! What a beautiful, wonderful, laggy and nostalgic night. I haven´t crashed so many times since early in the spring of 2008.

The music was good, people were in a great mood and the chatting in local and IM was funny. Jeff Ellsworth, Ziggy Starsmith, Larz Kaz, Khar Indigo, DJ Insyx, Flad Dagostino, Justin Pastorelli, Flupke Bekkers, Adonis Lubitsch and Trace Junkers were all there looking hunky as ever - except Khar who was sweet and not hunky at all - together with a lot of avatars I had met in my early days and some I had actually never seen at all. Sasch Petrov, the organizer of the event, was even seen dancing with this awesome Jimmy-hunk I remembered seeing at Second Pride.

Sure there was a bit too much "gesturbating", after all the event was at the Arsenal club in Gay Zone Germany and our German brothers love their gestures as we all know. I only had to mute about three Germans to get a tolerable noise level.

Sadly though the organizers decided to cancel the event after the third or fourth sim-crash, when we had only gotten through half the line-up, but Sarco Halderman had done his set and the time was getting late in real life so I was not too upset.

Sarco´s voice sounded hoarser and sexier than ever, Millimina Salamander and I suspected he had a very bad cold or a throat infection. When I asked him after his set he told me he had been whispering so as not to wake up his man, Harley, who was snoozing away in the next room.

I also enjoyed listening to the music of Sasch Petrov, Ralphy Triellis and Karl Kalchek for the first time, I hope to hear them again in the future.

In short everyone was there - or wished they had been - and some of the straight people too. Both my bosom-buddies sirhc DeSantis and Apmel Goosson made an appearance and even ush Underwood, who set foot on a German sim for the first time ever if I understood correctly.

UPDATE: I just caught this news on the Gay World News blog: Due to sim lag issues and because it went offline and restarted each hour… we regrettably had to cancel the DJ Night for today. We hope to have again this great event at a later date. Thanks All for coming !

On Moderation of Comments

Photo by Nam in Geum

I always like to tell people "I am the most patient man in SecondLife, absolutely everyone tells me so!" Those who know me well and love me - like my Ars, Guyke, Andrey and perhaps Millimina also - laugh in my face when I say this because they of course know damn well it is as far from the truth as you can get.

All the same I still persevere in telling all and sundry this as soon as I can possibly squeeze it into a conversation, in the vain hopes that someone who has known me longer than 15 minutes will one day agree.

The last week I myself  feel I have shown an amazing restraint that would rightfully make me entitled to truthfully keep on stating that I am in fact am the the most patient man. Alas no one seems to have noticed...

The Swedish SecondLife bloggers have been... hmmm... "discussing" the question of whether they - and everyone else - should use pre-moderation or post-moderation/reactive moderation on the comments made on a blog. There are of course valid reasons for each approach. I found an excellent summary here "Everything in Moderation - On Four Types of Moderation".

On my blog I have lately chosen to switch to post-moderation/reactive moderation primarily because I have had no experience with any misuse by commenters and I believe that a free flow of opinions between the commenters is of vital importance.

It is my personal opinion that it must be the choice of each blogger which type of moderation they choose. This choice must of course always take into account the experiences the blogger has had earlier, for instance it is well known that the Swedish blogger PetGirl Bergman with her blog Tinas universum has is the not-to-distant past had problems with defamatory personal attacks on herself and on others by anonymous or signed commenters.

Photo by Natalia Luzuriaga

The Swedish bloggers war was raised another notch when my bosom-buddy Apmel Goosson, the enfant terrible of Swedish SecondLife with the oldest Swedish SecondLife blog "Min avatar heter Apmel" (My Avatars Name is Apmel) the other day stated that he would link differently to blogs that used pre-moderation.

This decision by Apmel caused one blogger to stop blogging altogether and another blogger to express hurt feelings on being negatively discriminated against by not receiving the same exposure as post-moderated blogs.

It is my firm belief that every blogger has the prerogative to choose not only which blogs he wants to link to or not to link to, but also how he wishes to link to them as long as it isn´t done in a derogatory or defamatory way. There is no human rights issue involved in this, nor is it an infringement on anyones freedom of speech or expression.

I have actually kept myself a bit distant from these discussions where I have many opinions, in a way that is totally unlike me in these situations, so thats why I believe I now deserve at least a plaque or  medal telling the world that I am indeed the most patient man in SecondLife.

(The pictures on this post were chosen solely for their beauty and calmness so as to sooth any hurt feelings of my readers.)

What Are Words - Chris Medina

I thank my sister Millimina Salamander for pointing me towards this song.

"What Are Words" - lyrics by Chris Medina
Anywhere you are, I am near
Anywhere you go, I'll be there
Anytime you whisper my name, you'll see
How every single promise I keep
Cuz what kind of guy would I be
If I was to leave when you need me most

What are words
If you really don't mean them
When you say them
What are words
If they're only for good times
Then they don't
When it's love
Yeah, you say them out loud
Those words, They never go away
They live on, even when we're gone

And I know an angel was sent just for me
And I know I'm meant to be where I am
And I'm gonna be
Standing right beside her tonight

And I'm gonna be by your side
I would never leave when she needs me most

What are words
If you really don't mean them
When you say them
What are words
If they're only for good times
Then they don't
When it's love
Yeah, you say them out loud
Those words, They never go away
They live on, even when we're gone

Anywhere you are, I am near
Anywhere you go, I'll be there
And I'm gonna be here forever more
Every single promise I keep
Cuz what kind of guy would I be
If I was to leave when you need me most

I'm forever keeping my angel close

Welcome Back, Milli!

Photo courtesy of Millimina Salamander

She is finally back home again after her looooooooooooooong vacation.I cannot even start to tell you how happy I was when I saw my little sister had posted on her blog and even sent me an e-mail.

I have missed you so much, Millimina, you wouldn't believe it! Hope to catch in SecondLife soon, love you always!

Breathing

Sometimes when things are piling up, things get to hectic and confusion and worries mounts I have found that it usually helps to stop in my tracks and just breathe - deep, long and slow breaths.

In the old days Ars and I would sit down in the garden swing together. Just sitting there, focusing on breathing and being close together with the one you love always calmed me down immensely. After a while we always started talking, making sure we listened to what the other had to say, what was on their mind. We would breathe and talk, talk and breathe. Being together.

Nowadays my favorite "sitter-with" is Millimina. Even if she was busy today, she took the time to sit with me.

It´s good to have someone to breathe with.

The Follow - Friday, June 17th at 2 PM SLT

I got a message forwarded by Millimina from Jasmine Cazalet and NEO Audran that I would like to share with you all.

"This Friday its time to fill the sim of New Town of Sweden (SLurl). We have a live concert with the popular live band The Follow. 2 pm SLT. Be on time!"

Check out the bands blog here http://www.thefollow.com/

Well I am going to be there for sure, hope to see you all!

Millimina

 

Saturday didn't start too well. I was in a lousy mood when I woke up and just couldn't be bothered with anything. Then I read something on another Swedish blog suggesting that a new civil war is brewing among the Swedish inhabitants of SecondLife. I thought to myself, "Here we go again and this time I am surely staying out of this stupid and needless war as long as none of my friends are hurt." I actually believe these wars start because someone gets too bored during the summer months and feels the need to stir things up.

To my luck Millimina came in-world. I hadn't seen her since the Kiss-A-Swede event some days ago, she´s had ISP-problems.

When I am with Millimina everything just calms down. My volatile emotions and thoughts and my most desperate fears all simmer down and go to rest.

We walked around the sim a bit. I showed her Dejerrity´s new house and we talked about this and that in both real and virtual life. Millimina´s input always give me the right perspective on things, what´s important to me and what isn't. It doesn't even matter if she is upset when she comes, because we always listen to each other. Hell, on some occasions even I have been able to make Millimina calm, so it´s not a totally one-way relationship.

Millimina is an intelligent, insightful, humorous, bitchy and empathic woman and a perfect friend! I am so happy to have her close in SecondLife.

Oh in finishing this post I would like to take you all as witnesses to the fact that Millimina and I have agreed, that if neither of us finds a perfect partner before one of us hits 70, we will move in together and take care of each other..

Speaking for myself and even if I should have found the perfect man but Millimina hasn't, on my 70th birthday I will order my hubby to take me on a trip to where Millimina is staying to bring her and her stuff (and even a few of her cats and swans) to install her in the studio I will have prepared for her by that time.

A Whole Lotta Kissing!

The time for the 1st annual International Kiss-A-Swede Day in SecondLife finally was finally here.

Before it started I was wondering how the f**k I could come up with such a crazy idea, but that feeling passed once I had Millimina and Vampi at my side and we together waited for the kissers to start coming come to us.

Millimina and I before the party started (Photo courtesy of Millimina Salamander)

Kissable Vampi in a beautiful furry skin

 With an event like this there is no knowing who and how many will come, you just have to take it in your stride and go with the flow and most importantly just have fun!

People were coming and going all through the two hours, which is just as it should be on this kind of event, many I had missed seeing in a while showed up and some I thought might come didn't but thats to be expected also. Things happen in real life and in SecondLife, we just cannot be everywhere - and of course sometimes we don´t want to be at a particular place either.

The main thing is that those of us that were there had fun, and I myself for sure had an excellent time and kissed like crazy! There was only one dumbass loser who declined my kiss, it did not spoil my fun although I wondered about who shows up at a kissathon and refuses to kiss?

Anyway we were close to 25 avatars for about an hour and about 15 the rest of the time. I had an awesome time.

Thanks to everyone who came and special thanks to Vampi and Millimina for helping kiss a few!

Pictures from the event can also be seen on
Magasin Millimina,
Min avatar heter Apmel and
Blanche´s Arena

Now to my own kiss-fest pictures!

Kissing Carol

My boys Janttu and Guyke (Photo courtesy of Millimina Salamander)

Kissing Sven while Jon Rhiannyr dances

Me pouncing Carols hubby Timothy

Kissing sweet furry Zeba

Jon Rhiannyr pounces me after knowing me for less than 5 minutes

My bosom buddy sirhc, who was DJ-ing at another party at the same time

The wonderful Ziga and her Em - in amazing outfits as always

Not sure whom I am attacking on this picture, could be Sarco or Jeb  -  but it looks good...

Pounced by Jon again

Pounced by Blanche

Cuddling with Jon in the makeout room

Kissing Blanche again

Kissing Sven in the makeout room

Kissing Jon in the makeout room

The International Kiss-A-Swede Day in SecondLife

Well the long awaited day is finally here, today is Sweden´s National Day and I have also declared it to be the first annual International Kiss-A-Swede Day in SecondLife.

My beautiful sister Millimina and I have been moisturizing, lubricating and exercising our lips the last few days to give you the kiss you would expect.

The two of us -  and perhaps a few more Swedish avatars (untrained) - will be waiting for the world to come to us for a kiss between 12 (noon) - 2PM.

Oh, I just remembered, there may also be very sexy short Gothic styled hausfrau/security officer/club owner if she is able to secure permission from her hubby "the Big Cat" to take part...

Welcome all!

Take me to the kiss-fest! (SLurl)

To see how a real kiss is done, you can always WATCH THIS! But any and all improvisations are welcome...

Bara´s Release Party

Bara on stage

 

The cloud is Chaplin Early. He doesn't like his picture taken.
as you may remember from my series "Naked avatars in SL"

A guy named Galen Spot (Great legs huh?)

My beautiful sister Millimina and I having a good time

Bara Jonson finally released his long awaited album "Lost in America... Somewhere" with a release party at the wonderful Gimle venue, owned and operated by Iendi Laville and Apollon Allen.

Bara sang and played his guitar to us who where there or listening in on the stream; some songs acoustically, some songs to back tracks from the new album and some even in duet with his son young son Kris. Let me tell you at once, this album was well worth waiting for!

You can buy the full album here.

The audience at the sim where mostly Scandinavians but we had a thoroughly great time.

(This post has been corrected according to the clarifications made by Bara Jonson in a comment)

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

Second Day of Second Pride

The second day of Second Pride 2011 and I went to the party at the LGBT-sim. The first DJ there was my old friend from Boots Beach, Jerrod Roddenberger. He was really great to my relief!

Jerrod was so sweet to refer to Ars and myself as his mentors from his early days in SecondLife. I am sure I do not deserve such an honorable mention, but Ars was always good at looking after others and helping out as best he could. He is well worth any praise he gets.

The second DJ was Sasch Petrov, who is a sure card from the old days too. I used to go to the German gay club Arsenal to listen to him DJ. Sasch is still going strong, also to my great relief!

Well to fit the occasion I had made a special outfit for myself and a rainbow Jesters Hat. I thought I looked pretty stunning, but some still mistook my hat for hair which kind of upset me a little until I decided they could not be true fashionistas.

The club was filled with the most awesome male avatars I have seen in a while, well except for other members of my SecondLife family that is. Andrey, Dejerrity, Jeb, Guyke and Janttu are hard to beat when it comes to stunning avatars. One of the men caught my special attention, his name is Jimmy Windstorm. I would love to see him photographed by Eddi Haskell someday

 

I took a whole lot of pictures the first hour but was too tired when Millimina had joined me, which I really regret now because she looked beautiful as always. Life is too short for regrets though, so here are some of the pictures I did take.

One of the nice things about Second Pride is you get to meet people you haven´t seen for the longest while, nice guys that you have met earlier and become friends with but somehow your paths never cross - except for at Pride. Of course an explanation to that could also be that I have been pretty reclusive the last year.

Oh I mustn't forget to mention, I gave a guy an interrogation on behalf of someone I love dearly. He passed all my tests with flying colors so far, but I am not completely done with him yet...