A Glimpse Inside My Personal Matrix

Today, an event occurred that I just had to share. This post could also be titled “Why I don’t like talking to people.”

Last night, I was playing Second Life. I was just hanging around with my best bud Leila at a sandbox. (A sandbox is a public area used for building).

Now usually if I’m trying to build something, I’ll set up my private skybox to be left alone. You may wonder why I’m so anti-social in the sandbox, but the rest of the story will explain this.

If you can’t be bothered reading on, the answer can be summed up in one word:

Idiots.

So, I’m talking to Leila, and in strides Mr. Fuckwit.

Now, the social “rules” for Second Life are the same for real life. If you see two people together talking, you don’t just stride up and start talking. I mean, you might…but you’d walk up, introduce yourself and join the conversation…not just blurt out the first stupid shit that comes into your head.

This guy was a noob. Not a newb, a noob. There is a difference. A Newb is a new player who is trying to learn the game. A noob is a new player who thinks they know everything, will argue that black is white, and generally act like an asshole.

So he walks up and pulls out, of all things, a trampoline. At least I think that’s what it was meant to be. It was a black circle surrounded by a blue one. Forget the fact he just dropped an object directly on something I was building, the dumb bastard started jumping up and down on it, and tried to make me buy one from him.

Trying to be nice, I just say “No thank you.” To which he continually asks me why I don’t want to part with my hard earned lindens for quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

Upping the ante, he pulls out this little marvel:

PLEASE click for a better view...you must see the suckiness!

He said it was a sleigh. What I saw (and what you probably see) is a hollowed out cube filled with different colored primitives).

You see, to build in Second Life, you use “primitives” IE, basic shapes, cubes, spheres and so on. In the hands of a talented builder, they can make simply stunning and detailed objects. In this guy’s hands, you get a hollowed out cube. He starts trying to sell me this prim abortion as well.

Finally, Leila and I snap at the same time. Leila just asks him bluntly why we’d buy something from him we can make ourselves in 2 minutes. (I make a lot of objects for clothes, like flexible skirts, and Leila is herself a very talented builder).

Then, this 4 day old idiot starts telling us we don’t know what we’re talking about, and that we can’t possibly match his building skill.

Actual conversation:

Fuckwit : “Let’s see you try, if it’s so simple, you do it.”

Me : “Dude, I don’t have time for this. Look, I made 4000L this week from the stuff I made, how about you?”

Fuckwit : “I made 20,000 this week.”

Me : “Whatever, dude, can you go away now please?”

Blah, blah, blah.

Me : “Look, your whole sleigh is only made of about 6 prims, even a decent pair of shoes should have at least 20.”

Fuckwit : “You need 20 prims to make a pair of shoes? You mustn’t be a very good builder!”

Two things here. One, I’m making his dialogue actually readable. Two, apparently, more detail is bad in his eyes.

(Just in case you haven’t grasped the situation yet, in Second Life, I’m a successful builder. People actually part with their money to buy my ‘creations’. Leila is the same. This guy had only been playing for 4 days, and was still on his way to mastering the basics. He’s basically the guy from school who would talk out of his ass and argue with the teacher. I’m in no way a master builder, but against this guy, Leila and I might as well be frigging DaVinci)

Then he says “Well, let’s see you make reindeer as good as mine then!”

Big mistake.

Leila, stepping up to the challenge, starts to make a copy of his reindeer. Something she does in a couple minutes, and does a much better effort. I was considering just muting the idiot and going back to what I was doing…but as Leila was busy, and I had no-one there to talk to, I started to build a sleigh.

Of course, fuckwit decided to heckle. There was no way I’d ever be able to match his building mastery.

As the ten minute build progressed, fuckwit began to get nervous. It became obvious that there was no way he could look at my effort and still proclaim to be a better builder than me. So he resorted to making fun of my shoes. (Which was odd, because I didn’t make them, and his shoes where newbie shoes…in other words, just his feet painted black.)

Finally, I stood back, and said:

“There, that’s a ten minute build. I wouldn’t even THINK of trying to sell it. If I wanted to, I’d spend a couple hours, put in ten times the detail and script it to actually fly. Now do you see why I don’t want to buy your from you?”

Here was my effort:

At which point, he called me a cunt and left.

Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

This is something that I found online and just HAD to share with you all.

Not only because I had a long line of teachers like this, but simply because it’s so outrageous.

I hope that this is fake for one simple reason: If it’s real, I seriously despair for the state of world we live in.

Why?

Because this letter simply says:

“Don’t think. Obey anyone in a position of authority without question. Even if we are wrong, you’re wrong to disagree with us, because we’re the ones in charge.”

I know I bitch and rant about a lot of stuff on this blog, but this is exactly the kind of thing that truly pisses me off.

So let me write a short rebuttal to this teacher:

You’re a teacher. Your job is to teach. You are not doing your job, unless your job is to teach children things that are flat out wrong.

Yes, you are in a position of authority, but you are in that position because the world at large believes that you actually know what you’re talking about. Your job should be to teach kids to question, and to think, not to blindly obey and accept everything they hear at face value…especially when they know what they’re hearing is wrong.

Let’s face it. You didn’t give this kid detention because he didn’t blindly accept the ‘facts’ you gave him. You’re giving him detention because he showed that you are an idiot and an incompetent teacher.

Also, for one, he didn’t show a ‘blatant disregard for authority’, he showed a blatant (and justified) disregard for a ‘fact’ he knew to be false. Secondly, a school that allows someone like you to be a teacher, simply doesn’t deserve ‘respect’.

Respect is earned, not taken or demanded.

You, Sir, should not be teaching.

I hope to fuck that this is fake.

Rant over.

"Dirty Pillows"

Ok, this I just had to laugh my ass off at.

Take a look at this picture:

Here’s the story. The above is a class picture of a seven year old girl. Her mother is throwing a major shit-fit and threatening to sue everyone in sight because she believes that this pic was ‘tampered with’ to give her seven year old daughter ‘cleavage’.

Ok, before I get technical, isn’t this the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard? Why would a professional photographer tamper with this picture and send the ‘edited’ version to the family?

What has he got to gain? The reputation of a pervert? A slight chuckle that could effectively close his business?

No.

I’ll tell you what happened. The mother saw the picture, and before anything else, she heard ‘Cha-Ching!’ and decided she could exploit a photographic oddity to grab money from an honest, hard-working photographer.

Ok, now for the technical part. I’ll explain exactly what has happened in this picture.

In short…the ‘fill’ flash didn’t go off.

When you’re taking a portrait shot, you don’t want any hard shadows on the face at all. It looks ugly. What you do is light the subject from both sides (usually above and to the side), and then use a third flash that ‘hits’ the subject head on.

So your subject is lit from both sides, and the front…meaning there’s nowhere for a shadow to be created.

Now look at the picture. The light is striking the girl from the top left and top right, and the collar of her shirt is creating a shadow. In the center, where the two shadows meet, you get an area of deeper shadow.

In short, it looks like cleavage. If the third flash from the front had fired, it would have obliterated the shadow.

There, if you actually look at the picture and think about it, it’s obvious what happened.

Of course, that way the only thing you get out of it is a second picture with the lighting fixed…you don’t get to demand a few million in ‘damages’, because some pervert photographer purposefully gave your daughter boobs.

I look forward to hearing about the court case.

Well THAT makes sense...

Flicking through the TV today, I came across a Quizno's ad.

Your usual advertisment stuff, showing you a sandwich that looks absolutely nothing like the sandwich you get at the restaurant.

Finally, at the end of the ad, the voice-over guy (The one who always describes things like sandwiches or wiper blades like you or I would describe a cure for cancer) says:

"...and if you're not 100% satisfied, we'll give you a free sub!"

Now is it just me, or does that make no sense whatsoever?

You buy a sandwich, it tastes like ass, so you make up for it they give you a second 'Ass Sandwich' free of charge?

"This sandwich tastes like donkey balls."
"Oh, I'm sorry you don't like it sir. Would you like another free of charge?"
"But it tastes like donkey balls."
"I know, sir, that's why I'm offering you another one for free."
"But if I can't eat the first one, why would I want a second?"
"Because it's free."
"So why can't I just have my money back?"
"We don't do refunds."
"But you're offering me a second ass-sandwich for free, so by returning my money you'll be out by exactly the same amount you would be for a refund."
"But this way, you get two sandwiches!"
"BUT THEY TASTE LIKE DONKEY BALLS!"

Repeat ad nauseum

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman....

Ladies, I gotta hand it to you, I have no idea how you make it through the day.

Ok, as regular readers know, I play Second Life a lot, and have started my own clothing business in game.

I stumbled upon a problem. You see, you create clothes in SL by uploading your textures, then to create a new shirt or whatever, you have to put it on your character in order to apply the texture.

I’m a male. I have a male character. I make mostly female clothes.

Basically, I had one of two choices. Hijack Sunny’s character every time I make something new, or turn my character into an occasional cross dresser and get myself a ‘reputation’.

There’s also the problem that you need to take pictures of your clothes for your sales board…and it doesn’t matter how well designed that girly-pink strappy top is…no one’s going to buy it if it’s being modeled by a six foot tall guy with a goatee beard.

So obviously, I chose the first option…I make the textures in Photoshop and used Sunny’s female character to actually create the clothes and model for the pictures.

However, even that caused problems. I lost count of the sheer number of times I had to type “Sunny isn’t here, this is her husband, I’m just using her avatar to create some clothes”. Not to mention I was starting to seriously clog up her inventory.

So, I finally bit the bullet and made myself a female alternate.

…I know, I felt icky as well.

It solved a lot of problems. One, I didn’t have to hijack Sunny’s avatar. Two, I had a character to actually model the clothes for pictures for my sales board. Three, when the only items the new character has are clothes I’ve made, no searching through a massive list of items every time I want to look at something.

Then, to discourage conversations and misunderstandings, (after all, if I’m on using the female character, I’m ‘working’), I wrote in the new female character’s profile:

I’m actually a guy. This avatar was created PURELY for the purposes of being a mannequin for clothes design. Don’t take it personally if I don’t answer you or ignore friend requests. If I’m using this avatar, I’m working.

Seems simple enough, right?

Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?

So today, I made something new, log in as my female character, and apply the outfit. So I’m just checking to make sure everything looks right, when I get an IM:

“Hey Baby! How’re you?”

Another guy in the same area has decided he likes what he sees.

I ignore him. I’m busy…he’ll read my profile in a second.

“Hey baby, why are you ignoring me? Wanna go somewhere? I know a great place *wink*”

Jesus H effing Christ. I ignore him some more.

“What is it baby. Playing hard to get?”

Finally, I just say “Dude, read my profile.”

He does, and instantly vanishes. Obviously the idea that he just came onto a guy has disturbed him greatly. I chuckle to myself. I’ve been a female for 15 seconds, and I’m already starting to hate men.

So I finish checking the outfit. Then I decide to make some prims for it. (You make textures outside of the game, but to make actual objects, like flexible fabric etc, you have to make those in game).

I’m 15 minutes into making the object, when suddenly I get another instant message.

“Hey cutie!”

Sigh. “Read my profile.”

“OMG! Why do you have a female Av if you’re a guy?!?!”

Sigh. “Read the rest of my profile.”

“Oh, ok.”

This guy gets the message. He leaves me alone and I go back to designing…10 minutes later.

“Well, hello there sexy! How’re you this fine day.”

I’m about to lose it. I’m just trying to design some fricking clothes, and I’m being constantly hit on by guys who think watching two in-game characters have sex is actually a relationship.

I log out of SL, log back in under my male character. I search my inventory and transfer my adjustable title to my female character.

So I log back in under my female alt, and set the adjustable title up. Now anyone who looks at me sees a glowing sign above my head that says “I’M A GUY. PLEASE READ MY PROFILE BEFORE IM-ing ME PLEASE”

There, that should do it. I’ve got a gigantic sign telling everyone that despite the fact I’m using a female character, I’m actually a guy. I get back to work.

Then…no less that 10 minutes later.

“Hey Sexy! Nice tits! How you doing?”

This time I really lose it. I shout back:

“WELL, I’M DOING JUST FINE! MY BALLS ARE A LITTLE ITCHY THOUGH!”

Oh no. Now suddenly the pale friendless virgin sitting at the computer has had his sexuality questioned.

“OMG ur a fag! Why u usin a gurl?”

Ever just completely lose it? I typed so fast, smoke was coming off the keyboard.

“For FUCK’s sake!” I reply. “My profile states VERY plainly that I’m using this avatar for my clothes business. I’ve got a big glowing sign over my head that says “I’m a guy!” in foot high letters. I’m in a public sandbox that’s here purely for people to use to build things…Now what part of ALL THIS did you misunderstand as ‘I’m a girl who desperately wants to have virtual sex with someone who’s idea of a smooth chatup line is ‘Hey Nice tits!?”

The reply was a rather eloquent:

“Rofl! Ur a fag.”

Luckily, I’m a member of the sandbox group under both avatars, so I just banned him.

Now I should be clear that the vast majority of people you meet in Second Life are very nice people. I have used my female ‘mannequin’ a few times and not been bothered.

The difference is, while I occasionally get bothered under my female character…I’ve never been propositioned or bothered like that while using my regular male character.

I mean, sure, a good few women have hit on me in SL. (You can’t be listening to music in a virtual nightclub and not have people flirt with you). I also have quite a few female friends on SL…however, none of them have ever started a conversation with “Hey, nice ass!”…or called me gay if I’ve turned them down for anything ‘romantic’.

I mean, I’ve played as my male character and got ‘hit on’, and when I’ve let them know I’m married and not interested, usually the reply I’ll get is along the lines of:

“Oh, no problem, so where are you from?”

In other words, women can think “Oh, this guy’s not available or not interested. I’ll go look somewhere else or maybe he’ll just be someone fun to talk to.”

On the other hand, I’ve watched Sunny play, and occasionally she’ll get some freak who just walks up and says something really smooth, witty or romantic like “Wanna fuck?”…and when she tells she’s not interested, she gets called a ‘lesbo’.

In other words, the basement dwelling, teenage males can’t handle the fact that there’s a woman out there who doesn’t desperately want to virtually sleep with them

Seriously, ladies, I have no idea how you deal with it.

I’ve had less than an hour viewing a virtual game-world from the female perspective, and I found myself muttering ‘Men! Who needs ‘em?’

An Open Letter

Dear Politicians,

We, the public, understand that you’re desperate to get elected or re-elected. We understand the need for you to put your broadcasts on TV.

However, we would appreciate it if you would use your screen time to actually tell us your viewpoint and policies…rather than just using it to slag off your opponents.

These broadcasts prove either one of two things:

1) Either you’re both borderline criminals and only think of yourselves rather than the people you represent.

2) You’re both filthy liars.

I mean, seriously, think about this. We’re treated to back to back broadcasts of each of you telling us how terrible the other is. Either you’re both lying, or neither of you is worthy of our votes.

Vote liar or money embezzling, kick back taking asshole. What kind of choice is that?

People wonder why America, supposedly the greatest democracy in the world, has one of the lowest voter turn-outs on the globe.

It’s not that we don’t care. It’s just that every time voting season comes around, we look at you, and decide we don’t want any of you in office.

Do us all a favor and tell us why we should vote for you, not why we shouldn’t vote for the other guy.

Many Thanks

The American Public.

Most Extreme Idiots

So a couple nights ago, I was flicking through the late-night TV, and stumbled across a show called “Most Extreme Sports”.

Now, as a sane person, I automatically avoid anything with ‘extreme’ in the title. Not because I’m against taking it ‘to the max’, but because ‘extreme’ is one of those words that has been so over used, it’s become meaningless.

For example, you can buy ‘extreme’ potato chips now.

When a potato-based crunchy snack can be considered ‘extreme’, ‘slightly bored’ must describe being tied up in a chair and forced to watch the first half of an episode of ‘Full House’ over and over again for approximately 2.8 billion years.

Anyway, I digress.

This show used ‘extreme’ in the most common current usage of the word, where it means “People doing dumb shit and getting hurt for your amusement”.

So I left it on.

Hey, why not try to jump off a 30 story building on rollerblades and try and land in a bathtub of water? Could it possibly be inadvisable?

However, on this show, I found the dumbest man in the universe:

He appeared on the screen, gave the uniform grin of a short-bus rider… and proudly announced that he was going to break the sound barrier on a bike.

Now, let me be perfectly clear with this. I don’t mean on a motorbike, as stupid as that would be to attempt, he was going to attempt to break the sound barrier on a regular bicycle.

That’s right, one you have to pedal.

He was going to do this by riding his bike down the side of a mountain.

Wanna know the funniest part? He was taking this shit seriously.

I mean, don’t you think that at some point, someone would have told him that this was impossible…and by impossible, I don’t mean ‘highly unlikely’, I mean breaking the laws of physics impossible. About as possible as stopping a freight train by laying one of your testicles on the track

Ok, to elaborate on the, here’s physics 101:

Every body on earth has a terminal velocity. Terminal Velocity is the speed at which a freefalling object will stop accelerating and remain at a constant speed. Basically, it’s the point at which the force of gravity and the force of drag from wind resistance equal out.

For the average human body, this speed is roughly 120 miles per hour. If we’re generous and add a bit of weight for the bike, let’s say that increases to 130 miles per hour.

Of course, with terminal velocity, the only thing acting as drag is wind resistance, so the bike on the mountain etc takes away that little advantage.

So let’s be even more generous and say that through pedal power, he can increase that speed by roughly 30mph.

So, this guy is looking at a top speed of, at the very most, 150mph…

This is just a tiny bit shy of the 761mph required to reach the speed of sound. 611mph short actually.

It must be a bit of a hurdle to overcome, I can imagine his trainer:

“Ok, idiot boy, we’re a little short on the power, so I want you to dig deep down and somehow supply the same amount of forward thrust as a fucking passenger jet! You can do it! Harness the power of your stupidity!”

So there we go. 15 minutes research on the internet would have proven that this feat was impossible. With gravity and pedal power factored in, he still has to add to that the same amount of speed that a passenger jet cruises at…in fact, more than a passenger jet.

Even if he did it, it couldn’t end well. It would be like me sitting you in a wind tunnel, sitting you on a bike that’s vibrating like a bachelorette party-favor hooked up to the national grid…putting a 761mph wind in your face and saying “Hold on!”

However, one other thing about this bothered me even more than the physics of this.

Ok, not everyone knows physics (even the schoolboy stuff I just said), it is possible that someone is dumb enough to believe that if you ride a back down a big enough hill, that you’re going to just keep accelerating indefinitely.

But if you were attempting a land-speed record, no matter how dumb or inadvisable, wouldn’t you at least do a little research into other people who’ve attempted speed records and succeeded?

I mean, look at the car that holds the current land speed record. The Thrust SSC (yay, the brits!), the car that broke the sound barrier.

If you’ve never seen this vehicle, let me describe it. It’s essentially a cockpit that weighs about 5 ounces, suspended between two frickin’ jet engines taken from the British F4 Phantom Jet Fighter. These jets produce 50,000lbs of thrust

Even with all that power it just managed to break the sound barrier. It managed a speed of 763 mph

Don’t you think a single glance at even a picture of the SSC might have made him think:

“…and I wanna try this on a push-bike?!?!”

Put yourself in his position. Look at these pictures and imagine the pitch session:

“Ok, idiot boy, here’s what we want you to do. We want you to break the sound barrier on the ground.”

“Okey dokey!”

“Ok, here’s the one and only vehicle in the world that’s managed it so far.”

“Oh boy, that looks like fun! I’ll do it, I can’t wait to try!”

“Hold your horses there boy…we want you to do the same thing as this:”

“…but on this:”

Honestly, how many of you would have said “I’ll do it!”

Oh, and in case your wondering what happened…His bike snapped in half when he got to about 90 MPH. For some reason a racing bicycle didn’t appreciate being taken to 90mph on rough rocky terrain.

The guy attempting it broke nearly every single bone in his body as he left his bike and continued down the mountain.

This whole episode has proven one thing to me:

Nature punishes stupidity.