Life 2.0... Finally

Sweetie and I have been wanting to see Jason Springarn-Koff's 2009 Second Life-based documentary Life 2.0 since forever. Tonight we found it available to stream on Netflix and immediately watched it.

I'd been looking forward to seeing the film. I didn't remember anyone panning it, so I began watching in anticipation. The first hint that something was amiss was the mournful cello playing.

Now I love to hear a cello. I fell in love with the instrument not via Tchaikovsky or Mozart, but on the title track of the Bee Gees' album Odessa. That cello is haunting. Tonight's cello seemed to be playing a dirge.

It was a logical choice for the soundtrack. The movie was, as Sweetie wrote in an online review immediately after seeing it, relentlessly negative.

Springarn-Koff's film follows four Second Life avatars over a period of a year or so, with periodic head shots of SL founder Philip Rosedale, an appearance of the real-life financee of one of the avatars and, occasionally and briefly, the filmmaker's avatar. In the tradition of Frederic Wiseman, there is no voiceover.

The movie opens with avatars and online lovers Amie Goode and Bluntly Berblinger. Berblinger describes their behavior as emotional adultery; the film maker immediately cuts to the two, who live thousands of miles from one another, meeting in real life. Emotional my ass!

Berblinger and Goode are tracked as their SL relationships end their marriages and Berblinger leaves Alberta for Goode's home in Westchester, NY. Not surprisingly, things immediately fall apart and Berblinger, after a scene in which he shows his abusive side, heads back home.

A second arc follows 11-year-old female avatar Aaya Aabye, who is compulsively played by a young man whose visage is initially obscured by shadows. Eventually he is shown full-face, which made Sweetie and I wonder if, as the filming progressed, Springarn-Koff was pressuring him to increase his exposure. Aabye is eventually killed off (account closed) by her maker with his engagement still intact, but an ensuing discussion results in his financee leaving. The unnamed young man then creates a young male avatar and comes to consciously acknowledge that he had been sexually abused by his father when he was a child. As a mental health professional I'm often skeptical about such recovered memories, so it's entirely possible it's something he cooked up in his head. It's also entirely possible that it happened. I hope he is seeing a therapist to sort himself out.

The Human Behind Avatar Asri Falcone

A third arc follows designer Asri Falcone, who was doing quite well as a fashion designer and creator of luxury homes in Second Life until a content thief made her creations widely available in world. As she had given up her real-life position to work 15-18 hours a day with prims, her finances were thrown into crisis.

Both Sweetie and I were expecting a balanced or even positive film about Second Life-- that because of what we had heard when the film was released. We didn't get that. From the funereal score to an opening shot which cuts from two married-in-real-life avatars cheating in real life to a scene in which a man with a face obscured by darkness talked about his 11-year-old female avatar to a purposefully filmed shot showing the flaws of the house in which Asri Falcone's human lives in (yes!) her parents' basement, Life 2.0 is meant to show Second Life's creepy side. The cinematography accentuates this by focusing on parts of the faces of the humans in the film. You know what, fuck Jason Springarn-Koff. He's an ass who set out to trash Second Life and he managed not to get caught in it, at least by some reviewers (the New York Times got it, though!).

There’s no excuse, though, for one reprehensible sequence in which the camera descends into the basement of a Detroit home, while a cello saws ominously on the soundtrack, and creeps up behind a large, pajama-clad woman at a computer, primarily to shock us with the visual contrast between her Second Life avatar and her actual body. It’s enough to make you want to escape the real world.

Of all the avatars, I felt sorry only for Asri. Here was a talented, hard-working, positive woman who lost a business she worked for years to build to a scuzzbag who copied and sold her wares because of a bug Second Life should have damn well fixed and who was compensated only a few hundred dollars when she went to court.

Asri is no longer in Second Life; she deleted her account due to thievery and griefing (her account was hacked, large sums of money stolen, and her inventory deleted, most likely by the sumbitch who she took to court. Today she operates with a new avatar and has rebuilt her business. God bless her for her courage and stamina. Most people would have left the the world for good.

There are lots of great films about Second Life. Jason Springarn-Koff didn't make any of them.

Read More

Life 1.0 Intrudes

My New Kitchen Floor

If I've not been writing here much, it's not because I don't want to. It's because my laptop has been acting screwy in Second Life. My desktop is dead and every time I think I'll have funds for a new motherboard, processor, and memory, something expensive in my house or on my car breaks. I also got an opportunity to put much-needed new floors in my kitchen and bathroom (my ex-roommate Christine did a marvelous job putting tile in the bath and sheet vinyl in my 1940s kitchen). Chris gave me a huge break on price, but it was still expensive.

On the way home after taking a friend to the airport my Miata's brake pedal went to the floor. By using engine braking and the parking brake I was, skillful driver that I am, able to stop before I hit the car stopped ahead of me at the intersection. The Miata is in the shop getting new brake lines now. Let me just say having AAA lose my car instead of taking it to my mechanic as they were supposed to was a freak out.

Since I can't really build or use my Second Life camera, I'm not doing much in world. I miss blogging here, and will continue to write as things happen. It's just that not much is happening!

New Marble Floor in My Bathroom

Read More

Bowl Haircut

 Just in case my readers were thinking I was kidding about bowl haircuts...

Here's my mom and dad staging a haircut. They always claimed not to remember the bowl haircuts, but I certainly did. One Christmas they gave me this photo, framed.

Read More

And the Winner Is...

Here I am going all Lady Godiva in Exile's Counting Stars hair. It's one of two styles I bought at the Hair Fair this year.

It's mesh, I believe, but I like it because it seems to move. And even better, it covers my big-ass head without me having to wear the alpha.

Here's a back view:

Read More

Hair Overload!

Chey's Prim Hair Might Stick Through Her Shoulders
But It By God Moves when She Does

All, right, enough is enough.

My bloated inventory still has thousands of items from the Hair Fair-- notecards, landmarks, images, HUDs, and actual hair styles-- 95% of them mesh.

After hours or wearing and photographing hair and making hardly a dent in the demos I picked up, I've had it. Next time I'm in world I'll dump the entire shebang, except for the freebies. You can expect a post soon on free hair, but I'm done with the Hair Fair. There's too much of the same.

I know, I know, the fashionista mafia will be sending their knee-and-elbow team around to twist and distort my avi, but I had to say it anyway.

Some of the mesh hairdos look nice, but they sit rigidly on one's head like an upended bowl of spaghetti. They don't move when you do, or when the wind blows, or ever. Moreover, when the mesh is rigged, it can't be resized or moved around on one's head-- and if you don't wear the often bad invisble head-obscuring tattoo, your scalp shows.

I'm not a big fan of sculpted hair, either, and won't be unless and until the Lindens add flexibility. That leaves prim hair.

I like prim hair, and specifically flexible prim hair. I know flexible prim hair goes through your shoulders sometimes, and yeah, that's a pain in the ass, but it just does it for me way better than a plop of rigid chewed Double-Bubble.

Mesh hair is like a badly-applied wig in real life. When a wig blankets your hair, covering everything, it looks artificial-- but pull a few strands through and blend it so observers can see a place or two where your hair is attached to your head, and suddenly, as any drag queen knows, that wig looks like real hair.

Happily, a few creators use a combination of mesh and flexible prims to create nice looking hair that moves. You must wear the mesh and attach the prims, but it works well for me, and I just bought at least one such product. I'll do a blogpost about it soon.

Read More

Okay, Maybe Not This One

"Hair emergency! Hair emergency!"

"What is it now?" asked Sweetie.

"Look at this hot mess!" I cried.

"Oh, yes," she said. "The bowl."

"What bowl?" I wailed.

"The bowl the hair makers pass around when they get stumped. They put it on your head and there's your haircut."

"My mother used to do that with my father," I said, "but I never expected to be subjected to the bowl myself!"

"The path to platinum fashionista status is not an easy one, grasshopper," she said.

I cringed. "I can expect more of this abuse?"

"Just click Read More," Sweetie said. "You'll see soon enough."

Arrr! This One Was a Freebie, Matey! It's Not THAT Bad. Is it?

Read More

Chey Wears Hair Fair Hair

No Blow Dryer in the World is Gonna Help These Bangs!

Sweetie and I hit every single vendor at the recent Hair Fair. We know we hit every one because the layout, unlike many product fairs we've visited in the past, was logically constructed; we eventually wound up back at our starting point.

I have to say, I took demos from every one of those vendors!

I've not yet worked my way through all the freebies and demos (computer problems), but I've worn more and photographed more than 100 styles. You'll see many of them below the fold.

Mesh is of course the big thing this year. Most is rigged, meaning it can't be adjusted. Like sculpted hair, it's immovable-- although some hair makers add a second wearable object made of flexible prims.

Many of the creators have a big problem with bangs, as you'll see.

And now, the hair.

First, some styles I would consider buying.

Lola's Tango No. 13

Lina by Ayashi

Blush by Azure, or Azure by Blush

Sorry, I Don't Have the Fashionista Designer Name Recognition Gene

Calico by Delora, or Vice-Versa

Lore-Dana by Emo-tions

Read More

Slowdown!

I've been having a difficult time in Second Life lately.

My seven-year-old desktop (read about why I got it here) died in May. I've been using my four-year-old Sony VAOI laptop for everything. It has worked like a champ in SL until lately. Now, often, I find myself unable to build or cam using the mouse. Inspection shows zero processor free time and the system using up all the free resources. Usually system is zero, but it's as high as 60% when the computer is acting up.

Speedfan shows my CPU temperature runs about 61 degrees Centrigrade when Second Life is running, but the slowdown doesn't seem to depend upon CPU temperature. I'm beginning to suspect the fan on the built-in graphics card (if it has a fan) may not be running or may be running intermittently, but the slowdown could be caused by any number of things. In the meanwhile, SL is agonizing when I can't use the mouse.

I recently had a new floor installed in my kitchen, and when my electric range was moved we kept on going and left it on the curb. The oven element went out some time ago, and when inspecting it I somehow managed to fry the electronics. Considering that three of the four burners were operative, I realized one day I owned a 200-pound hotplate! For now I'm cooking with my microwave, steamer, crockpot, and an electric skillet that sits upon a TV tray. I had hoped to buy a stove by the time my friend Sandra arrives for a visit in late August, but now I'm setting top priority for a new motherboard, processor, and RAM.

Read More

My This-Is-Not-A-Fashion-Blog Parade of Styles from the 2013 Hair Fair Will Shortly Commence

The title says it all.

Read More

When Second Life Grinds to a Halt

 It's the Lindens' Fault. Except Torley, of Course. Torley is Blameless.

I had a terrible time in world last week. Second Life, which runs admirably on my Sony VAIO laptop, was giving me problems. I was unable to build or use my camera. When I tried, nothing happened. The program just froze.

My frame rate, ping times, and bandwidth were all good, so I blamed the rollout of server-side baking. I wasn't sure if the new sim software had actually arrived, but it was convenient, so I blamed the Lindens. I mean, why not? Everybody blames the Lindens. For everything.

I soon realized the problem was with my mouse. I could cam with arrow buttons, but the moment I tried to use the mouse, the camera locked up. Damn cheap Logitch wireless sumbitch!

It wasn't the mouse, of course.

The problem turned out to be WordPad, a Windows utility for reading plain text and rich text files.

On my recently-deceased desktop Word was a beast. It took forever to load and it was always annoying me--- so I converted my dozen or so most-consulted files (passwords, calender, notes, address book) to RTF. On my laptop, however, Word ran just fine. It was WordPad that was the beast. Files were slooow to open and search took forever.

I often leave the files I consult frequently open, and it was when one or more text files were open that my camera locked up. WordPad was the culprit.

I'm going to reinstall  WordPad and see if that solves the problem; if not, I'll convert my RTF files back to Word format.

Anyway, problem solved. And I still suspect the Lindens were behind it all.

Read More

The Spy Business Isn't What it Used to Be

James Bond Didn't Have a Smartphone

"I can't believe you've retired from your life as a spy," I said to Sweetie.

"Well, the spy business isn't what it used to be," she said. "I mean, I loved the Minox spy camera. It had class. Nowadays every idiot has a smartphone with a built-in 8 megapixel camera with high-definition video. It's just not the same."

"I see your point," I said, as I surreptitiously took her photo with my smartphone.

"And then there's the company," she said.

As in "The Company?" I said. "The CIA?"

"Them too," she said. But I mean the players. In the old days I hung out with James Bond and Julia Child and George Smiley. I used to visit Alger Hiss in prison."

"But those are semi-fictional," I said.

"As am I," Sweetie smiled.

"I mean Hiss and Child are real, but Bond and Smiley are fictional characters."

"Well, I used to hang out with them all," she said. "Especially Julia. Who do you think was the source of my interest in the pasty sciences?"

"Either Julia or Smiley," I said.

"Julia," she said, "although Smiley gave me the idea for throwing scones."

"Well, Hiss and Child are dead," I said. "Bond must be like eighty years old now, and Smiley's older than that."

"Exactly," Sweetie said. "And who has replaced them? Faceless CIA spooks. Homeland Security agents. NSA operatives. And Teleportation Security Administration patter-downers."

"Patter-downers?" I asked.

"You know what I mean," she said. "And then there's MI-6. It just isn't what it used to be. Bond is retired, Moneypenny came out as lesbian, and that old guy who made the weapons now works at the Redstone Arsenal and has like a thousand patents."

"Sean Connery was the real Bond," I said.

Sweetie is a Roger Moore fan, but she didn't bite. "And who's at MI-6 now? A bunch of geeks at keyboards, reading everyone's e-mails and recording everyone's calls." She sighed. "The field operatives-- there are still a few-- have to check in hourly via IM and attend weekly webinars. It was time for me to leave the business."

"Maybe you could hook up with Wikileaks," I said brightly.

"Who do you think sent them all those documents?" she asked.

"Oh," I said. "Well, what are you going to do with your time now?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "I'll do some experiments with icing string theory, certainly. I'll have to conduct them well away from the ground. We don't want any visitors dematerialized or covered with cream cheese."

"We wouldn't want that," I said, "although all those Brazilians who leave prims on our land could use a lesson. Maybe you could go undercover at Linden Lab."

"That's already been done," she said. "Hamlet Au. And look how that turned out."

"He's mostly not writing his own blog these days," I said. "Iris Ophelia is kicking ass over there."

"Mostly," Sweetie said, "I'm going to concentrate on being a muse."

"But you already are a muse," I said. "My muse. Please don't tell me you're going to muse others."

"No, no," she said, "but now I'll have ever so much more time to muse you."

Read More

On the Tram at Nostos Deer

Read More

Out of the Spy Business Forever

Judge Camper's Chair (Third from the Right) Now Sits Empty

"I like the word career," Sweetie said. "It's rather like careen. Careen is a word with class. You get to rush into unpredictable situations. You get to bounce off things."

I thought Sweetie would be morose after failing the FAA flight examiner's test, but clearly she wasn't.

"Why are you so happy?" I asked.

"I just got word from my attorney. I won my lawsuit against Linden Lab."

"The lawsuit about the UUID?" I asked. Sweetie had sued the Lindens because her universally unique identifier was comprised of letters and numbers-- just like everyone else's. "How unique is that?" was her primary argument for financial compensation.

"Not that one," she said.

"The lawsuit about your avatar distorting when it goes above one million meters?" I asked.

"No, no," she said. "The lawsuit about my inventory disaster."

In October 2012 one of Sweetie's exploding lipsticks detonated in her Objects folder. Although she had buried it 69 layers deep in nested folders, they hadn't held and the damage had been extensive. She argued that if she had only been able to bury it 100 folders deep, they would have held.

"As I know from my experiments," she said, "nested folders begin to go wonky at level 20 and are completely out of control at level 70."

That's one folder inside another inside another inside another almost ad infinitum, folks. Sweetie's experiments are extreme.

"My attorney convinced the jury I needed those 100 levels to contain those lipsticks," she said. "Seventy just wasn't enough. The folders have insufficient tensile strength."

"Who is your lawyer, anyway?" I asked.

"Judge Camper," she said. "He's no longer on the bench."

"That's probably a good thing," I said. "What's the settlement?"

"My weekly stipend is doubled," she said, "and I get lifetime free membership in Second Life. "From now on I get $1000L a week for life."

Sweetie came to Second Life just before I did, when the weekly stipends was $500L. I just missed the deadline. My stipend is $400L. For years now stipend have been $300, but in our case age has privileges.

"Wow!" I said. "A thousand Lindens a week! You can buy a sim."

"We already have a sim," she said.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I forgot."

"Now I have financial independence," Sweetie said. "I'm out of the spy business forever."

Read More

Je M'Appelle Alphonse

My name is Alphonse. I was a lowly maintenance robot in the bowels of the robot sanatorium until Cheyenne and Sweetie repurposed me. Now my life is far worse.

How is it worse? Have you ever been tethered to a brass pole?

No, I'm not a sex robot. Whimsy is a PG sim and there are no sex robots, thanks to the great gear in the sky. I'm a lift bot. All day long my scripts force me to move up and down and along the pole, conveying avatars from Cheyenne's Flights of Fancy store to the hollow asteroid below. Up and down and along the pole. Up and down and along the pole. Up and down and along the pole, all day, and as you can see, all night long. It's a boring existence. I long to go sideways. Why can't I go sideways? Dear god of all robots, won't you please let me go sideways!

When I was a janitor I had a broom. It went sideways. Left. Right. I miss my broom. Excuse me. I must now go up and down and along the pole.

Things would be tolerable here, but my cousins Gaston and Marcel torment me. Gaston is the lift bot. He thinks he is superior because he takes people upward, while I merely carry them down. But he is made of base iron, while I am made of noble brass. Who is superior, I ask you?

Marcel is insufferable because he can fly. Damn his jets!

My life here is depressing. I would like to get off this pole and...

Oh, excuse me. My mistress requires me to move her up and down and along the pole.

Read More

Sweetie's Rez Day Party Disrupted by Linden Bear Collective

Sweetie's 7th Rez Day celebration was going without a hitch-- until the Linden Bear Collective showed up.

It had to do with my present to Sweetie, and I take full responsibility.

You see, when I jumped to Marianne McCann's history build to take the photos I forgot to get earlier, I noticed a region named SL10B Bear Island on the map. I jumped there and found a sim filled with Linden Bears-- perhaps 150 of them.

For those who might not know, every Linden has one or more bears named after him or her-- and so do the moles, those hard workers who create in-world content for the Linden builds (only theirs are moles). Some bears are made specially for specific in-world events. The bears are distributed at Linden-sponsored events, and most Lindens will send you one if you IM and ask.

Many Lindens are no longer in world, and so aren't around to give away their bears. Their bears, and bears from past events, are highly-sought-after and generally unavailable-- but here, at SL10B Bear Island, were many, many Linden bears, all free for the taking.

I spent an hour or so grabbing bears. Since about half were transferrable, I grabbed two each of them, one for myself, and one for Sweetie. Back on Whimsy I spent the better part of another hour packing bears into a gift box for Sweetie. At last night's celebration I gave her the box.

Sweetie was delighted. Here were bears to drop from great heights, shoot out of cannons, attempt to tweak. She rezzed a dozen or so in gleeful anticipation-- but the bears had a mind of their own.

Well, no, they didn't. What they had was me, using my Mystiool's mimic function to make it appear they were hatching some sort of plot over on their corner of the platform.

Linden Bears Collective: Hey, you guys!

Fnordian eyes the Linden Bears warily.

Sparrow: OMG! They talk?

Linden Bears Collective: We're feeling lonesome over here.

Linden Bears Collective: We want to dance, too!

Sweetie: They are a collective, not a hive mind, right?

Sweetie backs away.

Linden Bears Collective: Dance with us!

Sparrow: Borg Bears!

Fnordian: Yep. At least that's the buzz on the streets.

Sweetie: Maybe I have keep them all in seperate folders in my inventory.

Linden Bears Collective: Resistance is futile!

Sparrow: See!!!!

Serenek: Heaven forbid they should fornicate and reproduce in your inventory, Sweetie.

Linden Bears Collective: We are only waiting for the great Torley to come and lead us.

Sweetie faints.

Sweetie: /dead

Sparrow: World War B

Sweetie *Dies*

Cheyenne Palisades: Sweetie's dead! I get her shoes!

Sweetie: Not my Grim Brothers heels!

Sweetie: I must revive...

Ingenue: You thought the robot revolt was bad...LL bears...a whole new problem!

Read More

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED to Sweetie's Gala Seventh Rez Day Party

What: Gala 7th Rez Day Celebration for My Mysterious Sweetie

Where: Whimsy Dance Platform

When: Saturday, 29 June, 2013, 5-7 pm Linden Standard Time

Attire: As You Wish

Music by Sparrow Letov-Meredith

Teleport to Sweetie's Party

Read More

Zoom In (and Out!) With Your Second Life Camera!

Above is a perfectly ordinary shot, taken at sunset on the Whimcentricity sim. In the foreground is a rusted-out boat by Wagnhorne Truss. Far away, in the background, is a lava flow on the volcano Pele.

Nice, shot, but wait. Let me zoom in my camera...

Click the images to zoom.

What the...!

Callie! Get out of my picture! Your eyes aren't rendering and it's creepy! Move along!

Click READ MORE to learn how to zoom your camera in and out.


As in real life, zooming the camera in foreshortens; objects in the background looks closer to foreground objects than they actually are. This can create a great deal of drama with landscapes and even more when taking closeups of avatars.

Compare the above, which I took at a concert, to the unzoomed SL snapshot below.

This shot of Netera Landar is from her interview in SL Newser - People. It's a good photograph, but zoom would have removed much of the background and allowed readers to get a better view of Netera.

You can also zoom the camera out. This creates a fisheye effect.

It's not such a great idea to zoom all your photographs, but it's one of the most powerful features of the camera. It's good to know how to use zoom-- and when.

So, how to zoom? It's simple. But before I continue, let me just say-- with extreme zoom you may need to increase your draw distance. 250 meters will usually work, but depending on what you're photographing, you may need to go even higher. Don't forget to turn it back down when you finish your phototaking.

CTRL-0 will zoom in. From the default view, the camera will step in fifteen or so times.

CTRL-8 wlll zoom out. From the default view, the camera will step out three times. It used to zoom out more, with the last step giving a strange and sometimes useful effect, but that's been removed.

CTRL-9 will return your view to normal.

When zoomed in you can back slowly out with CTRL-8, and when zoomed out you can pull in with CTRL_8, but remember CTRL-9. When you lose your focus (and you will) when zoomed in, it's easiest to return to normal, refocus, and zoom in again.

So just remember, CTRL-9. CTRL-9 is your friend. And so is zoom.

My thanks to Torley Linden, who pointed out the power of the Second Life camera in one of his early vidtuits.

Read More

Now You See 'Em, Now You Ah, Kinda Don't See 'Em

Sweetie and I loved this humorous display on the history of invisiprims.

Above,  leftomost, you can see the prototype-- a regular plywood primitive. Then it's gone (hence, invisiprim) until 2009 (in the distance), when you can catch a glimpse of it due to a supposed glitch.

As you no doubt know unless you're relatively new to Second Life, until the introduction of alpha masks with Viewer 2.0, invisiprims were used to hide parts of an avatar's body. They were widely used in furry communities and by makers of high heels.

Invisiprims worked fairly well, but they had a difficulty-- objects with alpha, including the waters of the seas of Second Life, are rendered invisible if they are behind an invisiprim. That's why there appears to be a hole in the water when you hover over the oceans in your legacy 7" CFM pumps.

I didn't know this until I read the wiki above, but there are two special invisiprim textures, "38b86f85-2575-52a9-a531-23108d8da837" and "e97cf410-8e61-7005-ec06-629eba4cd1fb", which can be set only via script. No wonder I was unsuccessful at my shoemaking endeavors!

Invisiprims were rendered obsolete with the advent of alpha masks, but still worked. Deferred rendering (enhanced light sand shadows) breaks them.

A lot of legacy furry avatars and shoes use alpha. In the case of the furries, I should think, simply wearing a full-body alpha mask would fix the problem-- except I'm sure the invisiprims are attached to the various body parts and would require some degree of skill-- and modifiable body parts-- to trick up. Ditto for shoes.

I now include an alpha mask with my robot avatars. I didn't use invisprims before (mainly because I didn't know how to make them. Instead I used a body crusher animation to keep arms and legs inside.

I suspect a lot of my shoes will be broken when the new materials rendering system comes online (and I believe it just did). That's sad.

Read More

It's a GOOD Life

About a year ago, Anthony had gotten mad at her, because she’d told him he shouldn’t have turned the cat into a cat-rug, and although he had always obeyed her more than anyone else, which was hardly at all, this time he’d snapped at her. With his mind. And that had been the end of Amy Fremont’s bright eyes, and the end of Amy Fremont as everyone had known her. And that was when word got around in Peaksville (population: 46) that even the members of Anthony’s own family weren’t safe. After that, everyone was twice as careful.

Jerome Bixby's short story "It's a Good Life" is a gripping tale of a three-year-old boy with the ability to do anything he wishes to anything or anyone. People in his small town of Peaksville, Ohio are rightly terrified of him because if for some reason he were to become irritated with them...

Despite his powers, Anthony Fremont isn't an evil child-- and that's what makes Bixby's tale so gripping. He's an otherwise normal child with a normal three-year-old's emotions and understanding-- that is to say, he's far from mental and emotional maturity. One wouldn't want to live in Peaksville. In fact, those who do live in Peaksville desperately desire escape-- but there is no escape because their world ends at the city limits signs. They're unsure whether Anthony moved Peaksville off somewhere by itself or whether he destroyed the rest of the world. Scary.

In 1970 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "It's a Good Life" one of the twenty best science fiction short stories ever-- and it appears on other short lists of best stories.

"It's a Good Life" was first published more than sixty years ago in paperback by Ballantine Books. Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2. would be difficult to find, and probably expensive if you could find it, but fortunately you can read Bixby's story here.

The late Rod Serling had a great eye for powerful fiction, so it's no surprise he picked Bixby's story for the third season of his television show The Twilight Zone. Starring a young Bill Mumy as Anthony, and with Cloris Leachman as his mother, it's a great episode.

Click READ MORE to see how and why "It's a Good Life" played an important role in the early years of Second Life.

When Anthony experiments with animals ("I ain't never seen a three-headed gopher before, Anthony!") or turns one of Peaksville's residents into a jack-in-the-box monstrosity, his mother asks him to send the unfortunate results to the cornfield on the edge of town-- and he does.

Second Life's Cornfield sim was where, in the early days, misbehaving residents were banished. They were sent there and couldn't leave until their suspensions ended.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to be locked up with SL's first crop of griefers, bigots, and scammers; rather like Robert A. Heinlein's Coventry, I imagine. Or, as Sweetie puts it, it was like the Phantom Zone in the Superman comics and movies.

And then, I suppose, the number of suspended avatars grew too large to be housed on a single sim and Linden Lab began to simply suspend  offenders' abilty to log in.

The Cornfield, past its usefulness, no longer served a a prison, but apparently remained on the grid. In past years I've seen it on the map, but I've never been able to actually get to it. Last night was an exception. There it was, on the western edge of the SLB10 sims. I simply walked across the sim boundary and into SL history.

"Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have told Rodvik Linden
he looked like a grown-up Bill Mumy.
Now look where he sent me!"

"Sure, I can tell you why you're here, but it's a long story."

Read More