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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Visiting Blackburne

I've been to the Firefly Bar in Blackburne again. I like this little town. Draven was there, too, and we danced a for a bit. The folks are real friendly and don't look down their noses at me as a whore for being a Companion, as happens on some worlds on the edge, nor do they get all deferential, as on planets in the inner systems. Pretty nice people all around. It may be that as a companion here closer to Sihnon, I am more respectable than I would be on some Rim worlds.

After dancing in the Firefly bar, I ran into and chatted with Cholgosh, a Blackburne Enforcer. We sat on the porch across from the bar and listened to the reports coming in from Hale's Moon of a Reaver attack and something about robots, War bots. Blackburne has had its own troubles with dangerous human-killing robots on the edges of the town, I was told.

I must find out more about this sector of space if we will be visiting here with any regularity. Aside from not wanting to step on any toes locally (at one point Cholgosh's partner, a spunky woman named Amyla turned up, and I hastily moved to give her the seat next to him so as not to give her any reason to thank I was "treading on the hem of her skirts"), I also need to know what dangers we may face while in this port. When the porch began to get crowded with folks wanting to ask the Enforcer about the news over the Cortex, I slipped away.

I ran into my brother Corwyn down on the street. Since he's the one who first told me about this moon, I asked him about its defenses. He pointed to big guns mounted on top of some of the buildings. There is a huge ship in dock, too, but he tells me it is a Firefly class vessel -- cargo ship, no guns -- and gave me a bit of a tour. I could tell this was a ship with some history. The pilot, whoever he was, had a toy dinosaur and a palm tree on his console. This felt like a ship that was lived in . . . and loved. But the bottom line is that it wouldn't be much help if Reavers attack, except maybe to get a few of Blackburne's inhabitants out of here fast.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Quote du Jour: George Sand

There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.--George Sand

"George Sand" is the pen name of Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, a 19th century feminist French author of over 30 novels and 8 plays. Sand is best known for her unothodox ways. She flaunted the conventions for women of her day by dressing in men's clothing, smoking in public, and embarking on many notorious love affairs, the most notable of which was with the composer Frederick Chopin, while she was living separate from her husband. One of her lovers, the poet Alfred de Musset called her: "The most womanly woman."

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Song du Jour: Jack Johnson's "Better Together"

There's no combination of words
I could put on the back of a postcard
No song that I could sing
But I can try for your heart,
our dreams, and they are made out of real things
like a shoebox of photographs
with sepia-toned loving
Love is the answer
at least for most of the questions in my heart, like
Why are we here? And where do we go?
And how come it's so hard?
It's not always easy and
sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing, it's always better when we're together

Mmmm, It's always better when we're together
Yeah we'll look at the stars and we're together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah it's always better when we're together

And all of these moments
just might find their way into my dreams tonight,
But I know that they’ll be gone
when the morning light sings
and brings new things
for tomorrow night you see
that they’ll be gone too,
too many things I have to do
But if all of these dreams might find their way
into my day to day scene
I'd be under the impression
i was somewhere in between
With only two,
Just me and you,
Not so many things we got to do
or places we got to be
We'll sit beneath the mango tree, now,

Yeah It's always better when we're together
Mmmm, we're somewhere in between together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, it's always better when we're together

I believe in memories
they look so, so pretty when I sleep
Hey now, and when I wake up,
you look so pretty sleeping next to me
But there is not enough time,
There is no, no song I could sing
and there is no combination of words I could say
but I will still tell you one thing
We're Better together

Monday, January 12, 2009

An Apology to Ms. LilyBell Snoodle

Dear Readers, I have perpetrated a grave injustice on a lovely and delightful Lady Genetic Construct. Yesterday, when I told you all about my visit to the Firefly Bar, I mistakenly referred to LilyBell Snoodle, the beautiful bartender there as a "Neko." Which just goes to show we should never make assumptions about someone based on ears alone. Mind you, the adorable ears do make one form assumptions, but as Lily herself told me in a comment on my blog post: "Her am not a cat!"

According to her blog LilyBell is in fact a genetic construct. Now I am not sure what exactly a genetic construct is, but it seems to have something to do with Recombinant DNA, a computer, the Reavers, and a (cat?) collar. According to her blog, "She was created to achieve one thing and one thing only. But her designer and creator (his name is Mindo but that's another story for another time) had his own agenda. Not a bad guy, Mindo. Just a little...well...a romantic at heart I suppose one could say. And he loved his creation." And what Lily was created to do was to mate. With a computer.

Not so unusual to those of us living second lives. Some of us mate with computers. . . or rather use computers to mate with each other . . . all the time! We call it virtual sex.

In Lily's case, however, something went wrong, someone pushed a button on her collar, and "Pressing the 'recombine' switch was effectively a 'reboot' - Lily as she was known and as she knew herself would go away and the genes used in her creation would recombine in a new sequence. She's still be in there...just a bit in disarray if you'll forgive the pun."

You can read more about LilyBell's adventures at: http://lilybellsnoodle.blogspot.com./

And to you, Ms. LilyBell, I do hope you will forgive my misunderstanding on the nature of your being and accept my apologies. You do serve a fine sake there at Firefly, and I intend to return for another sample!

Sunday, January 11, 2009

The Firefly Bar in Blackburne

Last night I was sitting alone in Jhai's airship sipping a cup of tea when Corwyn IMed and asked me if I wanted to check out the bar he'd be frequenting lately. The bar is called Firefly and is part of a role-playing sim based on the Firefly TV series / Serenity movie by Joss Whedon.

Now Whedon's Firefly is one of my all time favorites, sort of like comfort TV for me. When I am down, I snuggle into a fuzzy blanket on the couch and watch all the episodes while eating Jarlsberg cheese dip on rice crackers and sipping green tea. So how could I not go?

The place was not crowded at first, and we were treated to a dance on stage by one of the lovely ladies there. Corwyn flirted with Pariah, one of the dancers, and I checked out the guys, a fairly rugged bunch. The bartender, a very witty Neko Genetic Construct named LilyBell, gave me an excellent sake, and later, after my friend Brise joined Corwyn and I, she treated our table to a nice sparkly champagne. I even got a bit tipsy. By the end of the evening there was a full dance floor, lots of people having fun and making friends. Just the kind of place you want to be on a Saturday night.

As it turns out the bar is only a small part of this sim moon which has some interesting things to explore. Post-apocalytic buildings, caves, and even shopping! I wandered a bit after Corwyn logged off and apparently stumbled into a forbidden area because i got shot at by a flying robot drone that then chased me away. A new experience, being chased by non-humans and for reasons other than sex! I may have to go again tonight just to see what the action is on a Sunday.

Visit the Firefly Bar in Blackburne at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Blackburne/215/123/38

Thursday, January 8, 2009