Second Life has hobos. The hobos meet at a place in a sim called Calleta, and if you’re ever on Second Life, you should find it. Everyone who has any competence ends up there, and there are some profoundly talented people hanging around. They will be doing fart jokes and laughing at newbies, but still…

One of the hobos, Dingle Doights, announced that he was going to host a building contest for hobos. The theme would be ‘hobos on the rocks,’ because the land he was donating was on rocky terrain. There would be loving cups for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and monetary donations divided equally among all entrants.

I want to take a moment and show you the first place build. It’s made by Lepidus Thor and Kewi Noel, whose hobo group tag reads ‘Aged Hobo Builder.’ That’s kind of like Itzhak Perlman having a tag saying ‘Pretty Good Fiddle Player.’

Their build: Hobos On The Moon.

And here are some hobos on the moon:

Note that the hobo’s head is what’s known as a ‘sculpty,’ which is a somewhat tricky building technique on SL, and not only that, it’s got a special texture map made for the faces. This is a real product of artwork. My favorite, though, is the moon buggy, on blocks:

That’s the first place winner in the hobo building contest. So I’m completely overwhelmed to have won 2nd place. My build… A giant pile of burning tires.

What does this have to do with hobos on the rocks? I have no idea. But the hobos like gathering places, and they like gathering places that are dingy and dirty, so here’s a pile of tires, some of which you can sit on (marked with hover text saying, “tired?”). The sign says ‘No Loitering,’ which makes me laugh every time I think about it. Yes, laughing at my own jokes. And that’s the 2nd place trophy next to the sign.

I almost dropped out, because I had no ideas. I’m glad I didn’t. Perhaps the lesson here is that any idea, no matter how lame you think it is, is better than not trying.

The builds will be up for another week or so, if anyone wants to log in and see.

The purpose of a bag of potato chips is to become empty.

Perhaps through the consumption of the potato chips, or perhaps through the spilling of said chips all over the floor.

One way or another, the bag will become empty.

That is all.

Yes.

Just: Yes.

It’s all cliché, it’s everything you’ve seen before, but it’s just so well done. ‘Lord of the Rings’ re-imagined as a chop-sockey movie. And Jackie Chan and Jet Li fight onscreen, and it kicks ass.

I miss Ira.

But wait…. What’s this? Recent posts? Can it be?

Steff made another one. I’m the blue jello in some shots.

I went with Steff to an in-world conference about machinima (meaning, videos made inside video games). Everyone else was asking about what software to use and what kind of computer you need. She was agitating for better storytelling, asking questions like, “What makes the product a film rather than a series of rushes?”

Yay Steff!

Another Xanga person approaches me with a Xanga message. They want me to talk with them about something that happened long ago. I’m less than happy about their approach, and I tell them so. I go to their site and comment on a post, because it’s interesting. They get paranoid and assign all kinds of malice to my criticism of what they said. Then I get a message saying ‘just go away,’ as if I were the one who started the ball rolling. Now I’m banned from their site, and can’t even send them a message.

O fucking well.

Warning: Today’s theme song contains language and audio images of a frank and possibly disturbing nature. And by frank I mean Frank Zappa.

And if you think I’m not just posting this at random, You Are Correct. And you know what else?

LIGHTEN UP! Because, while some of you might not agree, broken hearts are for assholes.

Yesterday, I set out with two goals: One, return all the movies I’d rented, and two, price check PCs. I’m considering buying the cheapest PC I can find that will support a super-bad-ass video card. Because, you see, I have a Second Life.

But the point of this story is that I went to the downtown location of RePC, and then the Tukwila location in the southern ‘burbs, and then, sez I, before I get some lunch, I’ll drop in to Circuit City and see what’s there.

I have a few ideas about what happened next, but I don’t fully understand. I walked into the Circuit City, and instantly felt very, very aggressive. I hated the place. I had contempt for everyone there. I walked to the back to see the computers, and with each step I got more nauseous. The place was loud, there were some guys smiling at each other over super-loud car stereo displays, everyone who looked like a salesman tried to avoid my gaze…. But why did it seem like I was about to puke all over the memory card display?

Making my way out… Step through the automatic doors, out into the gray light of overcast, and the nausea vanished. I blurted out, “Fuck! that was weird…” and drew the attention of some people getting out of their cars. Hasty retreat towards my car ensued.

Even though the nausea had gone away, the agitation lingered for another hour or so. Lunch didn’t help much, though it did lift my spirits a bit. And I should also point out: Panera is totally not worth it.

I’ve never really liked Circuit City since a friend of mine applied to work there and discovered that they have monthly firings for the lowest-earning salesperson. This was years and years ago, and might not have even been true then, but still.

First there was lag, and then I couldn’t teleport, and then…

Haha. Oh well. I guess I won’t conduct any business today!

Rented the proverbial shitload of movies a couple nights ago, and I’ve been watching them.

‘Birdy,’ which started the career of Nicholas Cage, was kinda meh. I’ve had the soundtrack since it first came out, because Peter Gabriel did it. The soundtrack was really big-time ground-breaking at the time, or at least it seemed that way. It was mostly sort of ‘ambient’ remixes of Gabriel’s songs, with help from Daniel Lanois. But of course, the movie is supposed to be set in the mid-’60s, with flashbacks to the ’50s, and somehow ambient electronic music featuring African drums and electric piano don’t seem to fit. Anyway, I never saw the movie until just now.

Beautiful cinematography, OK writing, and terrible editing. So much lives just outside the reach of these filmmakers, it seems. Cage’s character is stuck saying, “BIRDY!!!” all the time.

‘Quilombo’ is the semi-mythical tale of escaped slaves in the mid-late 1600s in Brazil. They formed their own communities in the mountains, which purportedly still exist, but I haven’t looked it up. Their story of dealing with the Portugese empire is basically that of the Native Americans in the north: Fight, make deals with white people, deals are broken by white people, fight some more, etc.

‘Quilombo’ is beautiful in so many ways, but it’s a narrative driven by a historical need, rather than for any kind of insight. It’s like sitting down with someone and having them tell you the history of these communities, rather than the characters that inhabited them. So much of it is one- or two-dimensional.

It also has a certain Fellini/Jodorowski feel to it, and if you like those cats, you’ll dig this. Kind of surreal, and blessed with a certain stylized theatricality.

‘The Fury.’ You remember ‘The Fury?’ I remember when it came out, it was a big deal, because my friends said there was a guy in that movie who explodes from inside out. In 1978, that was huge. It had never happened on screen. Now it’s almost expected.

Anyway, I like this movie, despite its unevenness, and perhaps because of its unevenness. It might be a psychological thriller, or it might be a horror movie, or it might be a slice-of-life meditation on lower-middle-class Chicago. It has people exploding, but it also has the mother-in-law scene, the cop-with-a-new-car scene… And a VW Minibus, which makes me happy.

Basically, the plot goes like this: Kirk Douglas works for a ‘government agency you’ve never heard of,’ and his son is psychic. So his protege kidnaps the son because ‘the Russians have one, and the Chinese have one, so why shouldn’t we?’ It’s up to Kirk to save his son from the agency he once worked for, and he enlists the aid of another psychic youth, whom he finds because his lover works for the school for psychic youth where he was going to send his son before he was kidnapped.

And stuff like that. Plenty of scenery for everyone to chew, new-at-the-time special effects, secret government agencies, and psychic warfare. Such fun.

Still in the queue: ‘Dreamer and the Dreamtribe,’ about a tribe with a lot of cultural space for dreaming.