Ezzie Joins the Blogosphere

Ezziedq Mirabella, the newly elected Co-Chair/Secretary of the board of Second Pride, has joined the blogosphere today: Ezzie's Second Life.

Ezzie promises to tell us about what he is doing and what is happening with him in Second Life.

Welcome to the hectic world of blogging, Ezzie!

Dedication

This is to all the hateful trolls in first life, in SecondLife, in all other virtual worlds and last but not least in the blogosphere, especially the one that lately - for unclear reasons - called me a misogynist.

I know I should not post two songs back-to-back but I stumbled across this and here you have it...

(I tried finding an uncensored version of this particular video but without success, if you know where I can find it please tell me!)

On Bastards

I have always steadfastly maintained that it is one of life's basic truths that there are too few bastards in our lives.

What is important to know when you are reading my opinion above is that there are actually two different kinds of bastards.

First you have the bastards, that I am alluding to, the ones that say "To hell with it all, I will do and say what I wish." These are the ones who do not care about social conventions or rules that have been established to provide a sense of security to the more timorous among us. Although these bastards may sometimes hurt others feelings that is not their objective. It doesn't even occur to them that anyone can be hurt by what they have to say or do when they are being themselves, speaking their mind and voicing their opinions.

Then you have the other kind, the kind that give assholes a bad name. These bastards willfully set out to create trouble, destroy and hurt as many people as they possibly can in the process. Usually these bastards act in a sly, underhanded way, preferably cloaked in anonymity, because they are - Surprise! Surprise! - also huge cowards who do not wish to suffer the consequences of their words actions or convictions. This latter kind of bastards are usually motivated by revenge. They may have a lost an election of sorts or perceive themselves as not being appreciated enough for their charms, talents or work and now want to get back at the ones that they feel are the cause of their lack of success.

One of the bad kind of bastards has recently emerged, the Internet is a godsend for them. This bastard first appeared on Facebook I am told, but when Facebook banned him has moved the hateful slanderous vomiting to the blogosphere. The objective of this s-o-b, anonymous, loser is to bring discord into the gay community, smear the Second Pride Festival and some of it's directors.

I have now purged myself of this attention seeking good-for-nothing and will now continue enjoying Second Pride. May the wanker rot in his own vomit!

Focus, Bloggers!

Quoted from TopherChris

Before going for my habitual nap today I read three great posts that bloggers on my blogroll had posted.

When I tried to go back to read them again after my nap they had vanished completely - although I still see them in my blogroll. Hey I am the first to understand that one can sometimes hit the wrong button, but three bloggers doing that on the same day. WTF!

Come on, blog-friends, lets focus on what we are doing so we do not upset me!

"Ich Bin Ein Prim Teamer"

The title of this post of course alludes to a famous speech given by the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Berlin, West Germany, on June 26, 1963,

On February 21, 2012, a new Swedish virtual worlds blog appeared. The blog, called Prim Team, was not really discovered by anyone before blogger Blanche Argus posted about it on her blog Blanche´s Arena on  February 28.

Little or nothing was known of the blogger/bloggers as they chose to remain anonymous, other than that they claim to be a group of people with technical interests "who together have more than 25 years of experience in virtual worlds". All might have run smoothly for them if they had not chosen to unearth and regurgitate the old Scandinavian civil war in SecondLife by four posts focusing on the old witch hunt theme again.

With those four posts Pandora´s box was opened and the scab was ripped off the old wounds which have seemed to be healing since summer. Their rehashing of history made it very interesting to know who was really behind the "insightful" blog.

For me knowing who wrote something is of interest in determining how much faith to put in what they write. Admittedly most of us in the SecondLife blogosphere go by our avatar names, all except my bosom buddy Apmel Goosson who is out there with his first life information also. But even if it is "only" avatar names that in itself is important information, because we know them as well or little as we know people in first life by their identities.

Three people came forward and declared emphatically they had nothing to do with the blog. These three were Blanche Argus, Gittrika Mint and Walentine.

In comments on the Prim Team blog and/or on other Swedish SecondLife blogs it has also become apparent that neither the mudslinger or her"cousins" are part of that particular team. The team behind the blog have also chosen to clearly state in a post that my buddy NEO Timeless is not part of the team.

I am rather sensitive to the use of language and after reading the blog for more than a week I ventured a qualified guess, by the language used in and the topics chosen for some of the posts, that one of the persons in the Prim Team is in fact Sven Idyll, latest known in the virtual world blogosphere for his blog Svens(k) Idyll (recently shut down).

Strangely this time the Prim Team chose to respond that "maybe he is or maybe he isn´t". Based on the fact that they have previously stated outright if someone wasn't a member of the team this answer - in my mind - is a confirmation though non-denial that Sven Idyll in fact is a member of the group.

In my response to this I decided to declare myself as part of that team. I still await their answer to that claim, which should be interesting however it turns out.

Oh and I should add that I have a growing suspicion about another member of the team. She is a highly intelligent woman, who has always been kind to me but is vehement in her dislike and disapproval of the so called "witch"

They should have discussed their policy on the anonymity issue better.

Damaged, But Not Broken

Yesterday was more or less a wasted day. I slept in long, woke up, drank some water, then crawled back to bed again. All day the only memorable thing I did was brush my teeth, nothing else really. I didn't eat, didn't talk to anyone, didn't leave my home and didn't get dressed. I walked around in the flat and slept in my boxers, a t-shirt under a hoodie and thick hiking socks. Not a pretty sight, I can assure you.

Luckily I am off from work until January 2nd, but still I want to do more in my free time than sleep, blog and be in SecondLife.

However I didn't do a worthwhile thing until I finally crawled out of bed at 9 PM to make some coffee. After my first cup of coffee I started reading predictions for 2012 in the SecondLife and virtual worlds blogosphere. That was to a large extent a dreary ordeal.

Every SecondLife blogger with any ambition or pretension to be a serious part of the metaverse had come up with some prophesy or other on what we could expect of 2012. Many seemed to have taken their starting point in Philip Rosedale´s views on SecondLife as he expressed it earlier this year. The "high threshold" and the residents being “Smart people in rural areas, the handicapped, people looking for companionship, they love it. But you have to be highly motivated to get on and learn to use it.” statements.

Some of them even went so far as to say that a vast majority of residents are "broken" (physically. emotionally, mentally and/or spiritually).

I have never ever considered myself broken in any way, shape of form, and certainly not when I first arrived to SecondLife and decided to come back again, again, again and over again for almost five years now. Maybe I have gotten somewhat damaged during my time here, but I sure as hell have not been broken by this life.

Although most of them predict SecondLife will still be around for all of 2012, they still rant on about its high threshold compared to online games like "World of Warcraft", which is one of the fastest growing games and is therefore seen as a model to which SecondLife should adapt to recruit new users. So I went ahead and tried that game to see how easy it would be to join, learn and how interesting it would be in there.

I spent four (4) hours in the trial version of the game. First I must say it was not that easy to sign into. One has to register twice, which I cannot understand the need for and which was totally bewildering because the sign in´s come at different points of the registering process.

Once you are in, you choose if you want to belong to "the good" or "the bad" side and what kind of apparition you want to be in those alliances and how you want to look. Creating your looks isn't as advanced as in SecondLife if you want to vary from the given avatars and the resulting avatar is a disappointment.

After downloading, registering twice on different services (the game itself and something called "Blizzard" - if I remember correctly) and creating my looks for about 30 minutes I spent 3,5 hours honestly trying to give the game a chance to intrigue or fascinate me.

There was never any interaction with real people, just with machine dummies who gave you missions or could bring you to life if you died, all the set was about clicking fast and hard on things you had to kill. I admit, I am easily bored sometimes, but after doing this for 3,5 hours my brain was numb and bored to death by the simplistic shit.

If that's what they think we should strive for I for one don't want any part of it - ever.

Do you finally see to what extremes I am prepared to go so you should not have to, my dear readers?