Voicing with Millimina

When I came in-world yesterday and had finished my usual initial procedures to get unstuck from the back-deck at home, which has been an irritating feature of my SecondLife for awhile now, I checked my friendslist to see who was on.

Millimina as a vamp

I was happily surprised to see that my little sister Millimina Salamander there. She hasn't been in-world for a while due to first life work and other hindrances, but we have kept in touch via email. As I am now able to use my headset again without my jaw resting on the table with my nose touching the keyboard, I plugged in the headset and called her.

It was wonderful to hear her beautiful voice again. She speaks Swedish with a hint of a dialect that makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

I myself speak the most detested of Swedish dialects from the far south, Scanian. The rest of the Swedes claim the diphthongs of Scanian are so thick that it becomes totally unintelligible and "sounds like Danish". Although I myself claim that my dialect is extremely polished, I admit to sometimes speaking too fast and with a sultry drawl. I have on more than one occasion been asked to speak English when talking with shop assistants in Stockholm. I blame their lack of intelligence and imagination for this.

Anyway, we had a good long talk and caught up with the latest news in each others lives. I was very happy afterwards.

Everyone beware, I am going to ask for voice-conferences more frequently! 

Lesson in Geography

Sweden and Finland highlighted

When I was talking with my brother in-law Dejerrity yesterday we somehow slipped into the unusual subject of geography.

Dej told me he new where Finland was because "the country looks like a penis".

I had to correct him of course, and informed him that the penis is in fact Sweden while Finland is the ball sack, or as the Urban Dictionary describes it "the hairy, hangy; unusual, disfigured sack that hangs precariously from a penis". I also told him that in first life I live way down south at the tip of the penis "where the external urethral orifice is normally placed" or words to that effect.

When teaching someone anything it is always an excellent idea to use images you and they are familiar with. Dej and I both know penises well.

A Message From Love

"Dear Bock (I edited the name from my first life one),

If you are a transgender person in Sweden wanting to change your legal gender, you are forced to undergo surgery that will render you permanently infertile and unable to have children in the future. That's right: in 2012, Swedish law still mandates forced sterilization in order to do something as simple as changing the gender on your driver's license.

Despite a massive push to repeal the law, including support from 90% of Swedish MPs, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has stayed silent on the issue: allowing one small conservative party to block the change.

Right now a reform of the law is being debated in Sweden. We need a massive show of support across Sweden and Europe that finally convinces PM Reinfeldt to speak out and break the deadlock. Will you take one minute to sign our urgent letter? RFSL, the Swedish federation for LGBT rights, will publicly deliver our signatures directly to the Prime Minister and demand that he intervene right now: www.allout.org/stop_forced_sterilization

Forced sterilization has a long and frightening history in Sweden. Beginning with programs in the 1930s that tried to eliminate certain "undesirable" traits in society by forcing individuals to be sterilized, Sweden has long grappled with the painful history of stripping from citizens what we now consider to be a basic human right. Even Prime Minister Reinfeldt has publicly called sterilization law a "dark chapter in Swedish history".

Now he has a chance to close that chapter for good. A reform of the law is ready to be presented directly to the Parliament - where 90% of MPs are in favor of banning forced sterilization - but without a push from the Prime Minister, the conservative KRISTDEMOKRATERNA party will use its seat in the government to block the change.

We know he is on our side: whether you are straight, gay, lesbian, bi or trans, will you take a moment to raise your voice and ask Prime Minister Reinfeldt to take a stand for human rights?

Our friends at RFSL, the Swedish LGBT Federation, will deliver your signatures directly to the Prime Minister's office.

www.allout.org/stop_forced_sterilization
Thank you for going All Out.

Best, Andre, Emmy, Erika, Flavia, Guillaume, Jeremy, Joseph, Oli, Tile, Wesley and the rest of the team at All Out"

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If you haven´t done so already I think it is time for you to sign the petition now! ... and Love is actually a Swedish male name, if you were wondering. It´s pronounced like the young man does in the beginning of the video.

Celebrating Le Petit Prince

Yesterday the McMillan clan and friends assembled at the home sim to celebrate the first life birthday of Guyke, Prince of Paradijs (the traditional title of the heir to the throne of Southern Charm), on his 26th birthday - again.

Cupcakes in enormous quantities and varying sizes were served with tea and homemade honey. The laird, who at his advanced age has to be careful with his intake of calories, only ate one cupcake but the younger men could stuff their bellies with many more of the tasty delicacies. 

After a short break in the eating to give Guyke his birthday gift the family continued eating ice-cream and popsicles (cool, fruity, creamy and crunchy) on the roof terrace while enjoying a pleasant discussion on current events into the night.

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!)

Family Meeting

My prodigal stepson Guyke returned to SecondLife today, after a few weeks away nurturing his first life. It was good to have him back again and we had the chance to get updated on what had been going on in each others lives.

A while later we were joined by my brother in-law Dej. The three of us were all talking together on Skype because Dej (the tech-wizard) cannot get his SecondLife voice to work for him. We had a pleasant family evening together on this special day.

Upcoming Events

My hometown in first life is Lund, located in the province of Scania, which consists of the peninsula in the far south of Sweden. It is believed to be one of the two oldest cities in present-day Sweden. Every fifty year or so there is a new stick, brick or piece of glass unearthed that predates the city's origin with another 100 or so years. At the moment it is believed that the city was settled in circa 990.

There have been few changes in the street system of the city since Middle Ages, although the old ramparts of clay that used to surround the city are mostly gone.

The city was made an episcopal see of the Roman Catholic church in 1048 and a cathedral was built here. Lund Cathedral School (Katedralskolan) was founded in 1085 and is considered to be the oldest school in Scandinavia and one of the oldest in Northern Europe. The school still exists and was indeed the senior high school of the laird himself.

The province of Scania formed part of the kingdom of Denmark up until 1658, when Denmark was forced to give it up to Sweden after a devastating defeat. Denmark didn't completely give up it's attempts to take the province back until 1710. The region did not become a part of Sweden proper until 1719, but had the status of conquered "foreign land" until that year.

Until the early 19th century, a ruthless policy of forced assimilation was employed by the Swedish government in what until then had been a linguistically Danish region. As part of the assimilation policy a university was founded here in 1666.

Lund University is today the largest in Sweden (and indubitably the best as it is the lairds alma mater) with more than 42,000 students, although not all of them live here. The 30,000-35,000 of them that do live here make out a big bulk of the cities population of 83,000 inhabitants. Every year we get a new influx of another 10,000 students as approximately the same amount leave to continue their lives somewhere else.

What the students do greatly effects the rest of us and mostly we love them for it.

Every fourth year since the late 19th century the students in Lund have a carnival (Lundakarnevalen) which usually brings a staggering number of visitors to the city. 2014 is another carnival year and it will be celebrated between May 16 through May 18. which means my small city is going to have circa 400,000 visitors during the three days, mainly on Saturday and Sunday when there is a carnival parade through the city center.

We will enjoy it, endure it and be happy to see the end of it - until we start longing for it to come along in four years time.

Setback

I´m not quite sure what happened, but suddenly and quite unexpectedly - for me at least - I am back in the dumps. The medication I am on have now so limited the scope and depths of my feelings that everything seems connected with "tired". "Happy and tired", "doing fine and tired", "sad and tired", "bored and tired" and sometimes even "tired and tired".

Even I get bored with myself, its no wonder that others do too.

Photography by Peter Marlow

The way I know if I am feeling better or worse is if I wish contact with others or not. Right now I just avoid contact, I can easily do that in first life by turning off the cellphone or simply by refusing to answer, in SecondLife it´s not that easy, so I am staying away until my mood changes.

Soloing

As my hubby is away on an important function in his first life and the Second Pride meeting I was supposed to be at lacked quorum, I took the opportunity to go out flying on my own for an hour in my Seakite.

The Blake Sea was busy, but I did not get in anybody's way and didn't crash into any apartment buildings either - or crash at all for that matter.

Vacation

Today I start my vacation, a couple of glorious summer weeks with loads of rest and recreation.

I am not going away - not much - because I have some "self-management" and housekeeping to take care of in first life. I moved to this apartment not too long before Ars passed away so everything came to a complete stand still then and haven´t moved much since. A couple of home improvement projects also need to be resumed and finished, one at a time.

Of course there will also be the 2012 Second Pride Festival in SecondLife to cover, for my own and my readers pleasure. The festival this year is between Friday June 22 - Friday July 6, two weeks of fun and involvement.

So with sleep ins, a leisurely pace in my projects and as few night out on the town I hope to have a satisfying summer vacation at home.

At MWFW 2013 - The Shiki Show

Yesterday I took the time to drop in on the Euro Party at The Menswear Fashion Week, unfortunately I was late so it ended within less than 10 minutes of my arrival.

Nevertheless it wasn't a total waste of time because within a few minutes of my arrival at the venue I had the following conversation in Instant Message (IM):

[2013/04/20 14:50]  Lee McKay: Hot av!
[2013/04/20 14:52]  Bock McMillan: Thanks Lee ;) You aren't half-bad yourself? LOL
[2013/04/20 14:52]  Lee McKay: hehehe, thank you :)
[2013/04/20 14:54]  Bock McMillan: It was a real pleasure...
[2013/04/20 14:55]  Lee McKay: I'm having a real pleasure watching you :)

From that excellent start of a beautiful friendship we went on and talked awhile before deciding that we would meet again at the Shiki Show at 3 P.M. SLT and befriended each other.

A shitload of female avatars taking up space

When it was time for the Shiki Show I had huge troubles getting in because the venue was filled with mostly women, as if they don't have 51 out of 52 weeks a year in which to visit fashion shows. It is common knowledge that the ratio between fashion for menswear and womenswear in SecondLife is approximately 1:10,000 or maybe even 1:100,000. I cannot really see the need for women to hog the space and preventing interested male fashionistas from gaining access to the venue.

Lee and I at the Shiki Show

I had a conversation with one of the organizers, the kind and helpful Merrill Genesis, and suggested they raise the number of avatars allowed. Merrill agreed that it would be a good idea, especially as many in the audience were in the low lag icons. (As the obedient Swedish man I am, I had followed the request and had come to the show as a hot bowler hat, while ny new friend Lee - as the rebellious American man he is - totally ignored the request.) Soon after that I did get in on the venue with the help of Merrill and Lee.

The Shiki Show turned out to be a disappointing for me, I saw nothing I would ever wear in the show. All the same I had a good time chatting with Lee and avatar-watching (which is the SecondLife equivalent of people-watching, one of my favorite pastimes in first life).

Childhood

Guyke, Butch and Ziggy have been pestering me for a first life picture of myself, but this is as far as I will go at the moment.

In the picture you see me on a donkey and my older sister being protective. The picture was taken by my father on one of our families vacations in the Pakistani parts of the Himalayas. Quite lovable ain't I, but which child isn't?

Before Spinners Drag Party

I and Butch had been preparing for this event for two days, while Guyke was away in first life and taking it easy because he already had everything he needed in his massive Inventory. It was no wonder the two of us were a bit exhausted and put our feet up a little before the party as we had been running around in our high heels for several hours.

Bocquerelle reclining and Butchette resting

Butchette takes the weight off her heels

Guykita arrives, all refreshed and ready to party

I will post more pictures from the actual party tomorrow and will then also tell you everything about who was there and who won the "Best in Drag" contest.

Pro-cras-ti-na-tion

I don´t understand whats going on with me at the moment. Although I long to immerse myself in SecondLife and get back in touch with my friends and family there and with my home things seem to come up to stop me all the time.

Today I had planned to log in. I had taken half the day of from work for a with my dental hygienist and my doctor and a few other essential errands and once they were done I was going to log back in and check the tings I know are waiting in my mailbox and see how the sim was doing and get back in touch with you all.

This time I was "only" going to take a short nap before getting in, the nap lasted six hours and I just woke up and am still tired- Other days, I feel like I have had an "overdose of people" and just cannot handle more social contact but just want to be alone, which is rather strange for me because usually I cannot get enough of friends or family.

Otherwise my first life is running smoothly. I have just signed up a team of cleaners that will drop by for three hours every third week, My parents are doing very well and are in love again - at 81 and 82 and after 62 years together - believe it or not. Is it strange that I am a creature of habit and long lasting relationships with such an inheritance?

Well, all I can say now is that I am now p-l-a-n-n-i-n-g to reenter SecondLife tomorrow Friday. Hopefully noting will interfere this time.

Biking With Ziggy

I reentered SecondLife today. The main reason for doing so was that my buddy Ziggy Starsmith had promised on his blog to open up a keg of beer and I was in a good mood so I thought, "Why not!"

Well, once I got inworld our plans changed. First I looked around at the work Ziggy had done at his home, as you can see here it looks fabulous.

After a while Ziggy asked me if I would like to go for a ride on his bike. Of course I jumped on the chance to get a bike ride around the beautiful Second Norway in the safe hands of Ziggy.

At the behest of my son Guyke I asked him, "Do I need a helmet?" Ziggy answered, "No, I will drive carefully and slowly". When I told Guyke his response he said sardonically, "Yeah, that's what my brother told me - and then he didn't!"

Anyway I started out without a helmet and felt quite safe.

The feeling of safety and after the first sim-crossing when we were both thrown sky-high and after a bit twirling around were stuck in the sky and had to re-log to get anywhere.

So, for my personal safety's sake, I donned the first helmet I could find in my Inventory before rejoining Ziggy to continue the ride. Not because I did not have complete trust in Ziggy´s skill as a driver, but because he after all did not control all aspects of our ride.

 I had a great time and enjoyed myself all lot with my charming and always so sweet-talking buddy!

Photo by Ziggy Starsmith

For more pictures from this thrilling adventure please visit Ziggy On The Edge Of Second Life: Fighting The Lag Storm With Bock McMillan

SP Board Meeting 02/16/2019 - Minutes Posted

To assist my dear sexy friend Cay (cayson.triellis) and my adorable husband Tomais, the minutes from the board meeting they attended and found bewildering, confusing or downright objectionable are now posted at the Second Pride website (url) under "Documents". This (url) is the direct link to the aforementioned document for the lazy buggers.

The minutes contain a lot of great news, here I will only mention a few select ones.

• Second Pride is applying to become an LGBT+ Gateway to SecondLife. If approved by Linden Lab the organization would save USD249 per month in tier and can reduce its costs - thereby being able to donate more to charitable LGBT+ causes in first life.
• Changes in the mission statement of the Bylaws accepted by the board, to be voted on by the Membership.
• Members are - as has been mentioned in a previous post - invited to contribute with their ideas on an updated logo for Second Pride, a theme for the Festival in June, and additional services they would like from Second Pride.
• The 15^th annual Second Pride Festival will take place between June 14^th and 23^rd, 2019.
• New and improved donation kiosks are now available.

Read all about it and more at greater length in the minutes!

P.S. The Build Director also promised Cay to consider reintroducing floats parade in the festival.

Out On the Town

This evening I have been gallivanting out on the town with some friends in first life, so all you get is this picture of the establishment I have been at.

The food was great, the wines were excellent and the company very pleasant and amusing.

Support Ticket #01587329 VI

Illustration from Omnitechsupport

During the past night Theresa Linden has been putting Bock through another set of trials ordeals, whereupon she sent me the following email:

"A comment has been added to your Case..

Case: 01587329
Avatar: Bock McMillan
Type: Other Inworld Issues
Status: Information Requested

Hey Bock,

It is a pleasure helping you. You are so cooperative and understanding! I have logged in your account again today and it was also cooperating well. Just to make sure the issue causing the problems was not something on your avatar, I have detached everything from him, and also turned you into a test male.

What I would like you to try is seeing if you encounter the same issues when you are in this test avatar status. If you do right away, let me know and feel free to attach as normal. If you do not, slowly start attaching things one at a time starting with skin, shape, so on and so fourth, while testing your issues. Please let me know how this experiment goes!

Thanks so much for your time,

Theresa Linden

To reply to this case, either Reply to this email, or visit : https://secondlife.com/my/support/?caseID=01587329

(To view the Case online, you will need to log into Secondlife.com with this Avatar: Bock McMillan)"

---

The coming weekend I will do as Theresa has asked me and then report back to her. Please, keep your fingers crossed!

...but to night I am going out in first life to celebrate an 80th anniversary. Take care my darlings and we will meet tomorrow!

Memorial for Dej

I have been in low spirits ever since I got the sad news about my sweet brother Dej, especially as the circumstances surrounding his demise were unclear (the cause and the time of death).

I kept imagining him lying in his apartment and dying all by himself without being able to call attention to his situation. I hope his passing was swift and that he was unconscious through it, but kept imagining other horrendous scenarios.

Anyhow, a few days ago I pulled myself together and gathered up the courage to make a telephone call to one of Dej's brothers in first life in the hope of getting further information. I found his telephone number on the Internet.

The brother, Andy, was very kind (he had heard about me from Dej) and sounded strikingly similar to Dej. Andy verified all the information we have received so far about Dej's passing and the circumstances as far as they are known now. He also informed me that there was an ongoing enquiry and that the family has not been given any further information so far. The authorities were awaiting results from the many tests that had been performed. He believed that the results would not be forthcoming for several weeks yet. He promised to inform me when he was informed and we exchanged email-addresses.

I have come to the conclusion that the memorial for Mike/Dej cannot wait for the results. There will therefore be a memorial gathering at Dej's Place on Sunday July 15th, 2018, at 3 PM SLT.

Suggested clothing: Boardshorts/shorts and sandals/barefeet. That was Dej's prefered clothing when he was entertaining at home.

---
If you should not be able to come at that time you can go there from now until August 31st, 2018. I have prepared a memorial spot in the woods behind Dej's house. Here is your landmark, Rosewood Manor (Dej's Place) SLurl.

Laying Down The Rules

I utterly detest spam, both in my e-mail and in SecondLife group chats. More than once I have left groups which I thought were just too disturbing due to the occurrence of spamming.

About two years ago I and three others were made moderators in the "Swedish People in SL" group by PetGirl Bergman, who once created that group.

With the title comes the responsibility to enforce the three simple rules in that group.
1. No questions about anyone's first life in the group chat.
2. No advertising of products in the group chat without prior consent from the owner or one of the moderators.
3. No spamming with notices of ongoing events. Anyone in the group is welcome to announce an event, but it is not allowed to announce the same event more than once every 30 minutes.

Not that difficult to understand for any grown up person of normal intelligence one would think, huh? Well yesterday evening three avatars were taking turns announcing the same event every 10-20 minutes to the point were it go extremely tedious and disrupting to the rest of the group.

To make matters worse one of those involved had been warned by me personally for spamming the group just a few evenings ago. On that occasion she blamed chat lag in the group. to which I answered that she had been in SecondLife for more than four and a half years and should be well aware of that chat lag sometimes occurs and how that should be handled. The natural thing to do in that situation is of course to wait until it eventually pops up in the group chat or til you get the message from the system that the message will not go through. What you should never do is to re-post the same message repeatedly if it does not turn up at once.

With the responsibility of being a group moderator come certain privileges. I can hand out warnings for breeches of the group rules and - if the the conditions of warnings are not adhered to - I can also disallow text chat from the culprit for a specified period of time or eject them from the group.

So I reminded the three avatars taking turns about the consequences of not abiding by the rules. I took special care to spell it out to the female avatar I had talked to a few evenings earlier. When the next announcement came about only 20 minutes later I shut her off from the group.

I then got an IM from her asking me questions like "Who made you God?", "Why did I shut her off because her message came 20 minutes after the previous message from one of the other two and 20 minutes was almost 30 minutes?" and "A few nights earlier there had been a lot of spamming in another group and no one had done anything about it so why was I being so strict?"


The questions were easily answered and she soon settled down and asked me for how long she would be shut off. I told her I was considering having her shut off until Sunday but that I would let her back in if she talked with the other two and gave me a promise that they would follow the rules. After discussing the matter with the other two she came back to me and told me they were all sorry and would follow the rules in future. I then allowed her back into the group chat and the altercation was finished with the sharing of Easter greetings and mutual hugs.

Otherwise yesterday was a slow and sad day.

During the semi-drama I was told that one of my best friends sister had passed away at an early age. Afterwards I also had a short conversation with a close friend who confessed to me from out of the blue that she was now in a hospice and was certain of her fast approaching death, she was however in no pain and was well taken care of. After we had hugged and I had told her repeatedly that I would always love her and remember her she logged off. Finally I was informed that a very sweet and gentle male avatar, with whom I had a good and friendly relationship without being friends, had just passed away after being seriously ill for a short time.

These proofs of the frailty of our human lives and our sometimes strange priorities about what is important made me so sad and tired that I had to log off. For the longest while I could not fall asleep.