[Modeling kinky latex clothes and building steampunk vehicles don't go together? That's exactly what I thought until Ilsa Munro came along and showed me that wandering between these two extreme ends of the virtual world can be elegant and effortless. Within seconds she changes from a Victorian lady to a sailor mouth, from a charming roleplayer to her own confident and honest self. The professionalism of her application was a more than welcome change from the usual 'what do I have to do to get naked in the Herald?' and our photoshooting in Babbage Square took some hours - mostly because I couldn't get enough of the beautiful dresses in her inventory. Ilsa Munro ... the stage is yours! - Bunny Brickworks]
And lo it became my turn …
Errr, and lo I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. I tried to talk Bunny into a few extra shots – the whole picture worth a thousand words things but she wouldn’t play along so this is all her fault (unless you love it in which case aren’t I the clever one).
So here’s me, nothing too unusual in general though there are a few odd specifics. For instance Second Life (tm, patent pending, copyright, service mark, abandon hope all ye who enter) is actually the first online game I’ve ever played unless you count Yahoo Cribbage. And yes, I know, I’ve been yelled at that it’s not a game but I feel a tad pompous when I call it a simulation, and I spend 75% of my SL (tm et al) time in Caledon so I’m pretty immune to pomp in general.
Unlike the vast majority of SLers I didn’t find my way here for the three top reasons – sex, money, or sex, instead I was lured in by an advert for one of the millions of beachfront properties out there. You see my RL job is… It’s really REALLY awful by it’s very nature. Whenever you see someone screaming into their phone in rage and think about the poor person on the other end of the call … That’s me you’re thinking of. I’ve actually had people threaten to locate me and cut my throat which really sucks because then the company has to notify the authorities and paperwork like you can’t imagine has to be filled out (on the plus side I’m pretty certain that the inevitable flames here will seem mild by comparison). My original plan was to just hop on for an hour during lunch, sit on that lovely looking pixel beach, listen to my old timers music (Glenn Miller rocks the house! Wooo) eat my sandwich, and be on my way 55 or so minutes later.
Can we have a “Hah” from the assembled congregation?
You see I quickly discovered Kayliwulf Kingdom.
Here’s another oddity about me. I like fetish clothing, but that’s it. I’m not at all interested in being or having a master, mistress or slave of my own. I don’t even date in SL for heaven’s sake. I just like to dress kinky, which brings me back to KK. As I was saying, I discovered KK in general and the huge freebie table that Daph and Laz have set up (for the express purpose of turning innocent former Cribbage playing would be beach bunnies like myself into fetish junkies – those fiends) in specific. I would log on, shoot up to KK, raid the freebies, then go hide in my secret “try on the kinky clothes spot” which was a small strip of land behind the modeling stage that used to be on the KK sim. I’d unpack my new clothes and put together as many outfits as I could manage from the assorted pieces.
After a while I broke down and started using my one true money-making skill to get enough L$ for clothes. Yes, ladies and gents, I became a – hey! Get your mind out of the gutter! A Paying Customer! I give incredible money to Mastercard and bought myself a slew of Lindens, then turned around and bought myself a slew of fetish clothing which I used to get a job as a model at KK (where ironically I’m standing as I type this – it’s a slow evening).
Okay, so part time fetish model, still spending lots of time on the beach, right.
Then I discovered Caledon. If you’re not aware of it, Caledon is one of the largest Victorian roleplaying communities in all of SL. If you think it seems a little odd that on one hand I spend many hours a week standing in various states of undress modeling rubber kink ware, and the rest of the time in gowns the size of a Buick imagine how some of my neighbors in Caledon react.
Bzzzt! Wrong. The thing that draws me to Caledon is the fact that everyone who “lives” there works very hard to be polite and well mannered to everyone all the time, so other than the occasional very wry joke – usually having to do with vulcanizing something, no one says an unkind word. Remember how I spend my RL job – getting screamed at by people over the phone? To find a group of people where there’s an annual “compliment battle” wherein the winner is the participant who is the nicest to their opponent was heaven.
Which of course brings us to the inevitable “subtly trying to pitch my products without seeming too obvious about it” portion of the show where I casually try to lead you to my shops. Well, sure, like everyone in SL I’ve tried my hand at building things and I’ve actually had some small success – if by “some small success” you mean I occasionally come close to breaking even. The things I make are mainly for myself so if someone buys them and finds them useful great, if not, not the end of the world. So if you’re curious you can look it up.
Man I suck at the product pitching don’t I?
So there you have it, I’m just your typical Cribbage playing, former beach bunny, fetish model, Victorian roleplaying, steam punk vehicle builder. I’m certain that we’re thick on the ground all throughout SL, right?