Twelve and a half weeks ago, my sons were born. Myg’s labor was induced unexpectedly, so it took us somewhat by surprise and we disappeared from the metaverse. Myg manages to Plurk, but I barely read my email, let alone lifeblog in 144 character bursts.
Somehow I expected to be able to do more outside of giving bottles and changing diapers. I have done some things besides tend babies, but it’s all dealing with pressing meatspace issues—nothing as fun and indulgent as blogging here, logging in to SL, or spinning music. (Anyone interested in buying a 2000 Beetle TDI—great shape and 50 mpg!)
I’ve chatted fleetingly with a few of you, most of you not at all. But if you’re on my friends list, I miss you. I really miss the aimless funny conversations and listening to great music. Thanks to any of the deejays at Clockwork who have spun occasionally—I’ll keep the stream going and I hope to log in soon and do the same. Big love to you all.
James Schwarz has been uploading the rest of the headshot series! Man has a ton of talent. It’s so cool to see how he uses a consistent style and all the avs look so different.
Lots of great avs in there, including awesome shots of Myg, Sable, and Bone!
In addition to witnessing the birth of my sons sometime in the next five to six weeks—a predictably life-changing event with uncertain but welcome effects—there are a number of things I want to accomplish in 2009:
1. Finish my thesis
2. Land a teaching position
3. Keep the family solvent
4. Let my friends and family know how important they are to me at least once a month (thanks Raul) (Some people should get this daily.)
5. Send out work/publish/get more interesting freelance assignments (I know, that’s three, but they’re closely related.)
6. Work out more (This classic is the one that always gets tossed first, but it needs to be here—I want to stay in shape for my family and my sanity. Two boys are going to kick my ass, and I want to be able to survive the beating.)
7. Keep blogging
8. Choose creation over destruction
The top five on that list are not optional at all, even with variable outcomes, so maybe they don’t really belong on a resolutions list, but I put them there to keep the focus tight.
May you all have a better year, and just in case, I’ll throw an old Churchill chestnut on the fire: Remember, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”
When I logged in yesterday, I was greeted with this offline IM:
[2008/12/29 18:12] Chelse XXXXX: (Saved Sun Dec 28 13:24:33 2008) do you want to sell your avatar? been looking for one with the burgess last name
My first thought was no way, not a chance, never, and of course not. But then I thought about it. Did I have a price, even one that no one would pay? Probably.
If I consider the amount of money invested in my account–the land owned, the tier paid, the inventory–it amounts to several thousand dollars. I’m too chicken to attempt to add it all up because I know the total is embarrassing.
I think you could get me to consider it for US$10,000. Times are lean in my household, and that sum could be pretty useful this winter. For that amount I’d still be quite torn and might balk at the last minute. I think I’d jump for US$100,000 and not look back. So my price is somewhere between those two figures. I know, it’s a huge margin, so let’s call it US$50,000. I wouldn’t be able to refuse that.
Of course, no one is going to pay me that for my Second Life identity. It’s only worth that to me. (If I recall, that’s the price the Amsterdam sim fetched in a sale sometime early in 2007 and that was considered ridiculous by many.)
Why does my avatar have that kind of value for me? Well, it’s brand Alex. It’s the bulk of my extension into the metaverse. Outside of Second Life proper I have a blogging history and a number of email and social networking accounts. It’s a fairly cohesive identity. Currently, I have a larger online imprint as Alexander Burgess than I do with the name I was given at birth.
What I want to know is, would you sell your avatar? (And not an alt, your principal av.) What’s your price?
For the record, here’s what current Terms of Service state:
2.4 Account registrations are limited per unique person. Transfers of accounts are generally not permitted.
…You may not transfer your Account to any third party without the prior written consent of Linden Lab; notwithstanding the foregoing, Linden Lab will not unreasonably withhold consent to the transfer of an Account in good standing by operation of valid written will to a single natural person, provided that proper notice and documentation are delivered as requested by Linden Lab.
So it is possible to do it legally, though it appears not without some paperwork. For those of you interested, here’s the rest of the pertinent IM convo:
[2008/12/29 18:13] Alexander Burgess: Hi Chelse - what were you thinking of offering?
[2008/12/29 18:14] Chelse XXXXX: i really have no idea what its worth, i wanted one because i just got married in RL and burgess is my new real last name :) what would you take
[2008/12/29 18:15] Alexander Burgess: well, honestly, it’s not for sale. I just thought it was an interesting offer. It is a good last name.
[2008/12/29 18:15] Chelse XXXXX: ty
…
[2008/12/29 18:17] Alexander Burgess: did you go through all the Burgesses in search and send them IMs?
[2008/12/29 18:17] Chelse XXXXX: yes actually lol
[2008/12/29 18:17] Alexander Burgess: and any good responses?
[2008/12/29 18:17] Chelse XXXXX: no none yet
[2008/12/29 18:18] Chelse XXXXX: except you
…
[2008/12/29 18:18] Chelse XXXXX: 100000 alts named burgess that the owners forgot the passwords for lol
And as an aside, if any of you are going to be inworld tomorrow night, there will be a party at the Burgess-March loft in Topgol. We’re housebound in physical space so the party is all virtual for us. IM me for a TP anytime after 5 pm SL time, Dec. 31, 2008. Good music, witty banter.
As Elizabeth II says, Happy Christmas! Thanks to all of you who make our lives that much fuller, even the batshit crazy drama mongers. May you and yours be healthy and prosperous, especially now. And for those of you who didn’t see my plurk, here’s a little hint as to why you might wish to avoid purchasing a tree last minute at Home Depot:
It looks better now, after a little, er, fluffing. I’ll post a pic after I get it decorated later. And Merry Christmas Day to all of you who are in tomorrow already!
I had a big rant/analysis of this started this week but I got sick of reading my own words. I like these songs. They are good. I like a bunch more. They are also good. Click the arrow to play the ones listed here or right-click and “save as” to download. These will be up until Jan. 1, 2009. Enjoy.
I’ll be spinning this set and the next 20 of the top 40 from 2008 tonight at my rezday party (I was two yesterday, Myg is two today, and Hawks, that train jumper, is two tomorrow). Come party another rezday away with us, at our loft, starting 5 p.m. SL time, 12/15/08.
I’ll be spinning this and other great stuff at 5 and 8, sandwiching a couple of great sets by Romana at 6 and Esteban at 7. Get your geek on.
That is one smoking hot video from The Kills. I’ve been watching it for a couple of days now and thinking about sex, violence, and fiction. Throw in drugs and rock ’n’ roll and I’m shitting clichés. What is it that makes it appealing? (And please, if you disagree with me let’s get it going in the comments, I’m sure this one is not everyone’s g-spot.)
Chuck the cinematography, the great song, and the kickass wardrobe–what’s left is two attractive people having a physical confrontation and I still think it’s hot. It’s all about sexual tension going in the wrong direction. Or maybe the right. The reason I throw fiction into the mix here is because I believe it’s how we explore existence and create meaning. And I write a lot of it when I’m not online.
Art allows us to explore these themes without further traumatizing ourselves by actual violence. Part of the reason I love The Kills video is because it is fiction. Don’t go thinking I’m advocating rape or domestic violence, or even violence, period. But I am interested in making art about it, to understand. To think about why I’m enrapt watching VV and Hotel act out a fight. Or why Myg and I bicker and tease all the time—or even beat the crap out of each other with kung fu HUDs inworld. I like going right to the edge, to feel it without suffering the same consequences. Sure, maybe I’m sullying my beautiful mind, but guess what? It’s too late for that. I’m here for the experience and have the tinnitus to prove it.
For me, a lot of it is vicarious pleasure. I don’t drink, because I would have been dead decades ago and I’d like to stick around and watch the show, so I’m unlikely to end up with the “I was drunk” excuse for a good romantic scrap, and the last time I hit a girl I was in fifth grade. She decked me with a counter punch and I stayed down. (Nadia, if you’re out there, sorry I was such a prick, I think you had it goin’ on and I just was too young to understand it.)
All violence is obviously not sexual, and not all sex is violent, but there is most certainly a set that is the intersection of the two. I don’t buy the idea that the presence of violence cancels sexuality. And if you want to argue that the violence portrayed in the video is actually not violence, per se, and is rather simply foreplay, you’re just playing semantic games to make yourself feel better. The video, if not the song itself, is about violence-encoded sexual tension. If you buy into Freud and Jung at all, it’s also about the introduction of violence as a cover for shame over sexuality, i.e. we want to hit each other because we’re ashamed of wanting to fuck each other. It all starts with a punch in the arm on the playground.
Whenever the topic of sex and violence comes up, I hear the bridge to Bush’s hit “Everything Zen.” (I’m going to digress into music because that’s where my mind goes often and I don’t have much left to say coherently on that Kills video. And if you click on the song titles in this post, you can hear the tracks. Go Blip.fm.) I’m not a huge fan of Gavin Rossdale and co., but I admit enjoying the hits and the top-flight production of both Steve Albini on Razorblade Suitcase, and Alan Winstanley and Clive Langer on Sixteen Stone.
Until I started writing this post, I’d always misheard the lyrics in the bridge of “Everything Zen” as “there’s no sex in violence.” Apparently I was wrong. It’s: “there’s no sex in your violence.” Mumbles Rossdale strikes again.
Before recognizing my error, I was going to use this as an example of how irritated I can get by the occurrence of political positions I disagree with in songs. (Those that I agree with, I’m in favor of. Fight on, brothers and sisters.) But instead I want to point out how miscommunication can fuel a discussion and because I want to digress, poring over the lipstick traces in the laundry with a magnifying glass.
It’s my impression that “Everything Zen” is often read as an anthem against rape or any connection between violence and sexuality—because of that one repeated line. At least, that’s the argument I have in my head when I hear it and can find a few instances of when I Google it to back me up. But upon recognizing my error, I revise my understanding. The way I look at it now, it’s more like a statement of desire for the addition of sexuality in some unnamed interpersonal violence rather than the banal horror of whatever is there. But really, that’s just reading way too much into it, because the lyrics to the song are a Waterloo of wtf? I’m all in favor of obscure lyrics, but without the music these are fucking thin. And to hype the line “Raindogs howl for the century” as some kind of ode to Tom Waits and Allen Ginsberg is ludicrous. Even if Rossdale meant it that way, at best it’s pretty weak sauce.
Follow me a little further down the rabbit hole. Albini produced Bush’s sophomore album, Razorblade Suitcase. I don’t recall whether the criticism of Bush for wanting to be too much like Nirvana and The Pixies came first, but the band would be at a loss to refute the influence after choosing Albini—who had worked with the Pixies on Surfer Rosa and Nirvana onIn Utero.
Part of the formula that makes a song like “Everything Zen” connect with listeners is the sum of carefully selected familiar elements. Here’s how you aim for a hit if you’re Bush: You start off with some fairly inspired Neil Young-style guitar onslaught (familiar to every rock fan since 1979’s Live Rust), throw in the Eddie Vedder vocal style that was de rigeur, make sure you enunciate “find my asshole brother” at the end of the first stanza, and then kick into a soft-loud-soft-loud structure that was perfected by the Pixies early on in their career. Bush managed to do it up right, get some hot-shit producers to make it pop out of your speakers like a shower of new ball bearings, and next thing you know, Mr. Rossdale is proposing to Gwen Stefani (I’m sure this is the real root of my animosity toward him).
Speaking of the Pixies, let’s get back to sex and violence. Here is the primer for Nirvana, and Bush, and thousands of other bands that came after. I can’t count the number of times I’ve failed attempting to write a song with the simplicity and power that Pixies achieve repeatedly. It was that perfect confluence of talent and neurosis that makes a great rock band, and usually also makes it an unsustainable endeavor. Let’s take “Tame,” from Doolittle. Now there are some abstract lyrics that hold up under scrutiny:
got hips like cinderella
must be having a good shame
talking sweet about nothing
cookie i think you’re
tame
i’m making good friends with you
when you’re shaking your good frame
fall on your face in those bad shoes
lying there like you’re tame
uh huh huh
tame
It’s all about tension. The lyrics and the song structure work together to make that point, and it doesn’t sound much like anything in rock before. The way Frank Black screams “tame” in the chorus conveys extreme sexual frustration and pushes violence back into the picture. Tell me you don’t get a little twinge when he sings “fall on your face in those bad shoes”—you know he was happy watching her fall, teasing her about her shoes. What a great line with a beautifully ambivalent word choice in the use of “bad,” in this case simultaneously suggesting the shoes are: a) not good, perhaps unstable, or b) good in the way of “badass.” And then you get a picture of her on the ground with the misuse of “lying” and the introduction of dishonesty—Frank Black thinks the subject’s entire presentation is a sham, she’s not tame at all. It’s driving him crazy.
And it drives me crazy. If you’re still reading, thanks for indulging me. Happy weekend and just because I need it, here’s another from The Kills.
Alexander Burgess: drive the car, don’t wear it
Alexander Burgess: rez it on the ground, then sit on it
Alexander Burgess: you have to type in the IM window or I can’t hear you
Alexander Burgess: I’m 58 meters away
kutzune13 XXXXX: i need to eat dinner, hang on please…
