Quote of the Day: K. J. Parker

"Love is a confidence trick, that's all. Nature's way of suckering a mammal with a brain and a long vulnerable gestation period into reproducing. Humans can think so ordinary animal-grade maternal instinct wouldn't be enough to make human women go through all that, not if they stopped and thought about what's involved. So you have love. It's a substitute for rational thought; look at it that way, it's the complete antithesis of what being human is all about. Humans can make choices, it's what makes them unique. Love takes all your choices away, and there you suddenly are. Worse still love inevitably leads to the worst pain of all, when you lose the people you love."

--Death talking to Miel Ducas, from K.J. Parker's Evil for Evil

Sci-fi author K. J. Parker's steampunk engineer trilogy, Devices and Desires, Evil for Evil, and The Escapement is a fabulous study in human nature... and shoes, and hunting, and weapons of mass destruction, and war. I could go on, but really, you should just go read them.

Tsai's life goes off on a Tangent

I am not even sure where I was when I met him. It has been only a week or so, and it feels like centuries. Time in SL messes you up like that. I was on a quest for the perfect pair of sexy shoes. You know all strappy and sparkly. And when I walked out of the store, there he was. Standing in the middle of the street, looking all dark and broody. Black hair in a ponytail, long wisps of it falling in his face. Dark glasses, black jacket. The kind of man your mother tells you to stay away from. A dark bird of prey. Dangerous. Desirable.

I wanted to try out my newest sexy walk so I strutted past him. Let him see my ass. That usually does the trick. I was expecting a wolf howl, or a raunchy comment. Was thinking, why don’t I get clients who look like that? Then he stopped me. Of all the unexpected things he could say, he asked the origins of my name. I told him that I’d tell him about mine if he’d tell me about his. We went to Mystic’s Club. (I highly recommend Slow Dance 4!) We danced. I have been dancing ever since.

There is something about this mystery man. He is an enigma—even for SL. Scary desires. The hands of an artist. The silver-tongue of a poet. "Verbal foreplay" he calls it and he is not wrong. Let me tell you, the give and take of teasing and flirting, the fencing with innuendo, and the right balance of sexy talk and promise—this is a fine art. Here’s the thing guys, most women know that the art of lovemaking lies not just in the look, but also in the words. You can be the hunkiest of hunks and if your dialogue is consistently "hey, I wanna f*** you!" you will not be getting flocks of hot women rushing to lie down for you.

It is easy for women to pick up most men. Men love to hear us talk sexy. But rare is the man who can keep us on our toes. Who can keep up his half of the dialogue, and mean it. I have met scores of men in SL... only a handful were truly good at SL flirting. One hot geek, one sexy Brit, and this man, my mystery lover.

Don’t know where this is going, don’t know how long it will last. Don’t care. I’ll fly this bird as long as he will return. No jesses, no hood. And if the talons he has hooked into my heart are occasionally scary—well, life is not...love is not... for sissies.