It Happened One Night….

…is one of my favorite Classic films, starring Clark Gable (the most handsome, sexiest, masculine, suave, cool, intelligent full package male that has ever lived) and Claudette Colbert. I love the 30s and the Hollywood glam of the 30s. This is my sort-of ode to It Happened One Night.

Silent Night

 

Silent Night

When my nephew was a little boy, my sister overheard one of his friend’s telling him that there is no Santa Claus. My nephew, bless his little 7 year old heart, shushed the kid and said, “Be quiet! I know! But my mom doesn’t. She still believes in Santa Claus.” I heart that kid…now young man.

Chinese Fortune

Chinese Fortune

 

Chinese Fortune

Chinese culture has a special place in my heart. My father’s first wife was Chinese (Taiwanese to be exact, but she is of Han ancestry, which is Chinese) and my older sister is half Chinese. My father has always had a particular love for China and I grew up admiring Chinese culture. I’ve always wanted to go to China and spend some time there learning. It’s the most beautiful and spiritually enriched culture in the world. Even though my sister is half Chinese, she is ethnocentric and in her heart she is 100% Chinese. Even though I am not Chinese at all, I am 40% Chinese in my own heart. So, inworld, I decided to go visit Hong Kong, maybe pick up some ginger tea and sticky buns and some funny toys and show off my new Ombre Hemingway berry shirt from Emery that I purchased a couple of days ago at FaMeshed. I love playing with different hues of similar colors, such as pink and purple, so I think this outfit is super cute and would wear this in RL. My shirt is paired with a pair of pink skinny jeans from CM, Tulip studded lavender loafers, Lelutka Hera hair, and Color.Me.H.O.F accessories (triangle gold earrings and continental wallet).

Shirt – Emery – Hemingway Berry  (mesh)

Skinny Jeans – (CM) Cracked Mirror – Mambo Jeans (mesh)

Shoes – Tulip – Studded loafers lavender (mesh)

Hair – Lelutka – Hera

Earrings – Color.Me.H.O.F – Triangle gold earrings

Clutch – Color.Me.H.O.F – Continental wallet (mesh)

Ode to San Francisco Hipsters

My inner Hipster shinning through.

San Francisco has a lot of hipsters. The entire Mission District is nothing but hipsters and they always attach themselves to the one thing I love the most – art, so they are inescapable. The Mission district is like the Brooklyn of California and my art hub. They are hard to be around because they’re assholes.  They think that their “independent” way of thinking is progressive when in fact, it’s trendy because, well, being a hipster is trendy. So, being a hipster is an oxymoron – completely and utterly contradictory. I spent 9 years in Art school and was surrounded by them and their hateful glares and their snotty dispositions. I got tired of seeing skinny man chest (from both men and women) and saggy butt skinny jeans. Last Friday I worked a very cool event at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and was surrounded by them. I wanted to smack them all. Why can’t they just be pleasant? Why’s it so hard to NOT be dismissive and rude? Dear Hipster douche, don’t you know I could shove my fist down your throat easily if I wanted to?

What I said above about hipsters is not very nice, now is it? However, I have a confession….

I myself am a hypocrite because I am a closeted hipster.

Yep! There I said it. I don’t look like a hipster, but I still have the same “independent” and “non-conformist” attitude that’s a bunch of bull.  I love fashion and like buying from independent designers, and have a disdain for anything popular. I have not listened to mainstream radio in years. If you saw my Spotify playlist, guarantee you would roll your eyes because I listen to hipster music (Indie rock). My best feature is my brain and my hair. I really believe I have great taste. I love to travel, but hate fancy hotels preferring couch surfing or staying in cool “bed and breakfast” type places. My honeymoon will be in Morocco….This is only the tip of the iceberg folks. There’s more, but I won’t go into it.

Unlike a typical hipster, however, I am friendly and non-judgmental. Not everything is self-motivated in my life, I’m not rail thin, and I still enjoy the pop music of my childhood (and I still rock out to Spice Girls)…so there!

What’s on me…

Hair – Lelutka – Isha

Earrings – (Yummy) – Floral Dangle Earrings (Gold)

MadPea Carneval

Rollercoaster of doom

I love a MadPea production. I was hooked when this fabulous team of builders built the Sanity Falls Hunt. So much fun, so well thought out, so innovative, so beautifully executed. Wonderfully creepy with just enough gore and haunting chill to keep you on edge, watching your back at every turn and occasionally screeching at the slightest sight of a lurking shadow. One of my favorite weirdo movies is Delicatessen  (if you have Netflix, add it now and watch it after you read this). MadPeas is like a morbidly murderous version of Delicatessen stylistically with Gothic/sci-fi gore mixed in. I absolutely love it and look forward to each and every one of their productions. So, when I heard of Carneval opening, I had to go at once! I spent a few hours there, riding the rides and strolling through the village and the haunted house. I even started playing The Kaaos Effect, which I have yet to complete. So, all in all, I enjoyed myself immensely, took a bunch of pics, and uploaded a few that I liked the most. So, if you have not checked out Carneval, do it now…then watch Delicatessen (hope you like subtitled movies).

A walk towards fate

Fate…

Afterthought

 

 

Happy Halloween (More of my mediocre Photoshop attempts)

Celano from E-Clipse Design

It’s Halloween. I love Halloween, but I haven’t really been participating in RL for the past….oh….decade almost. Seriously, I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since I was a teenager. I haven’t decorated my house for Halloween since 2006. So, to dress up in Second Life for Halloween was pretty fun. In the above photo, I am wearing Celeno by E-Clipse Design. I was looking for a costume that would really stick out and came across this awesome costume on Marketplace. I combined it with Nuuna’s Skins Black Skin coverage and voila!

Celano by E-Clipse Designs

To Wear Hair or Not to Wear Hair….

You can leave your hair off…

Shifting through my inventory, I realize that I have sooooooo much hair! So much! Hair is so highly coveted in SL that I KNOW I am not the only one with a ton of hair. I have hair that fits my modern SL life and hair that fits my Fantasy SL life. I spend my time living on two sims, one that is themed and one that is not. The one that is themed is Winterfell (not to get confused with the Winterfell Game of Thrones RP sim), which is a fantasy theme that is part of the Steamlands (Caledon, New Toulouse, New Babbage, Seraph City, Steeltopia, etc etc. Click here to see the best list I could find on the web that lists all the Steamland sims). To live in the Steamlands and participate in Steamland activities, you must look the part. Well, the part looks like this in Winterfell (I’m at 3:34 and at 9:17, but you won’t recognize me). So, I have outfits and hairstyles that fit this sim. The other sim I live on is modern and that is where most of you know me from. I have pretty much stopped participating in Steamlands events because my partner in crime left SL and it got boring. I decided to focus completely on modern day living in SL, shop ’til I drop, buy tons of hair, and make new friends, which I have! Yay!!

Now, why the Sinead O’Connor look? My lovely skin from Lelutka comes with an optional hair base, which is what I am rocking here. In RL, I have had my hair this short before. I shaved my head 3 years back because after only 3 years of putting chemicals into it, I damaged it beyond repair. It’s all grown back now, chemical free, but I was super self-conscious about it. I thought my face looked like a moon pie, but everyone kept telling me that I look beautiful and regal. I thought they all were crazy, and for the record, I still do, but the liberation of having no hair was enjoyable…. despite the fact that I would not leave my house with either wearing a hat or wrapping my head in a head wrap. Hair is just as expressive as make-up or clothing. When I lost my hair, I lost a way to express myself, a way that I enjoyed, so I became self-conscious. I only shaved my head because I wanted to start from a clean slate. Now I spend a great deal of money on my hair so it looks good, in SL and RL, which is ridiculous. For some odd reason, I have a hard time running around SL with no hair though in RL, if I looked like my avatar, I would rock this look so hard. Maybe because of the knowledge that this hair is a base, and not actual hair, or maybe because of my own self-consciousness of how I feel about my own hair. When I shot this picture of myself, I thought “Stunning”, but still would not walk outside my house only wearing my hair base. I threw hair on my head and left. Isn’t it funny how we can transcribe our phobias, or whatever you want to call them…..self-consciousness, from RL on to our SL selves, as if they are the same? But they kind of are the same. I am not role playing in SL, nor do I use SL to fulfill my wildest fantasies. I only look different from Dido, but nothing more. So, why the hang up over hair? Do I feel less feminine without it?

Once upon a time I had dreadlocks….for 10 years actually. I cut them out and when I did, people were so shocked and upset! They said that I looked like an anchor woman (this was the beginning of me putting chemicals into my hair to remove my natural curly hair. Bad mistake). I cut them out because I thought they were not feminine enough and I wanted to change my look, which I did big time. At that time, India Arie had that song “I am not my hair”. I use to have to tell people that all the time, that I am not my hair, until they got use to my new pixie cut (this is 3 years before the head shaving event). However, I realize that I kind of am my hair. Not the texture, not the color, not even the condition of it, but the self-consciousness of just having hair itself, as if it is essential to my beauty (whatever amount that may be) and my femininity. Is it wrong to feel that way? I think so. Something else for me to talk to a therapist about.

3rd Day at the Cinema

Playing with comic book effect in Photoshop

 

The Cinema in SL is quite huge! 80 stores on an all mesh sim, it’s flippin’ awesome too! So awesome that I have yet to finish going all around to the stores. I bought quite a few fabulous things that unfortunately I have not had the chance to snap photos all of and post in my blog (I am such a shitty blogger). For instance, to name a few, I purchased the Penis Pumps (in nude) by HANDverk, *BOOM* I Promise lingerie set, Caroline’s Jewelry Vintage Key Necklace, Wasabi Pills Nikki Mesh Hair, and Cheeky Pea’s Likeable Things table set (above).

I love SL fashion, but what I really live for in SL is furniture and interior decorating. I was so stoked about my table set from Cheeky Pea that I snapped a bunch of photos of me sitting at it on my pavilion. The image above is just one of the images, but I decided to have some fun with it a bit and try giving it a comic book effect. Being a relatively new Photoshop user, I am learning all the tricks and effects and I am having some fun learning them!

Posting for Posting Sakes

So, I have no pictures….well I do, but they are not done yet. I haven’t written an entry in a couple of weeks. I’ve been too busy! I always praise SL bloggers for being able to blog so frequently. I wish I had the time. I calculated how many hours I worked last week. You may not think this is humanly possible, but I worked 90 hours last week! 90 hours! I could hardly Plurk! This week is less, but not by much. I swear, I’m gaining weight in RL because of my stress levels. I keep snacking round the clock. I am going to have to go on a diet in a couple weeks (not right now because eating more makes me feel better, plus a couple pounds isn’t going to kill me). Luckily, I have the luxury of working from home, but working from home comes at a price….my time! I have been working on a few series of photographs in SL, a couple of sexy ones (one in which I am going to ask a SL friend to model in) and 1 fashion one, but it’s going to take me a few weeks to get them going. I really want them to be the best work I’ve done so far so I am taking my time figuring out what I want out of them. I’m also trying to get a RL life. I just work too much. So, though I have been MIA after I just started this blog, I definitely plan on working on more content. It’s just going to take me some time. So, my 5 followers, please stay tuned….

No Need for Pleasantries

Robbery at convenience store in Nestlefire

I’m always looking around for places to snap photos in Second Life (like every other SL photographer. DUH!), forever on the search for stunning, if not just interesting, sims. Since I am relatively new to SL photography, I try to challenge myself, not spend any money (using what I have in my inventory) and do something different each time. One evening/afternoon/who-knows (I took this photo weeks ago) while wandering from place to place, I ended up in Nestlefire. Nestlefire appears to be a nearly abandoned place where the only thing available is a shifty hotel, restaurant/cafe, grocery store, an abandoned house where I stumbled over a dead body and a torture chamber, and a gas station. I walked into the gas station and immediately thought that this place would be a great scene for a super sexy, gun-toting, tattoo wearing, shaved hair sporting, feisty chica in red pumps to come in and scare the living wits out of the grocery clerk. Alright, maybe I only had the gun toting part in mind. The rest came later. Well, the grocery clerk part was not an option for me, but I imagined her standing with guns in hand wearing a laissez-faire facial expression. Two guns might be a slight exaggeration, but who gives a shit. It’s my photo. After all, she is a lone criminal, free of the constraints of man, trying to make her own way in the world one robbery at a time, with looks to kill! Oh, that sounds like a great drama TV series! Okay maybe not, but you get the point.

Unfortunately, nothing I am wearing is new. This post is not a fashion post, but just a photographic artist post. The shoes are from Mstyle, pants from Auxiliary, shirt from…I’ll have to look it up and insert later, hair from Wasabi Pills, and guns from Bounce This (comes with a pose, but I used a different pose with the props).