Well, hi ho, ladies and germs, and sorry that it's once again taken me so long to get an update posted that I promised would only take a short time. Ah, the work of an unemployed internet rockstar is never done, I'm tellin' ya! Anyway, in my last entry I was getting everyone caught up on what's going to be going on in my life this fall and winter, now that I'm finally finished with The Recent Unpleasantness (i.e. me slaving my ass off this summer, keeping a personal friend's internet startup from falling apart, then getting screwed out of almost all the money I was owed as a thank-you). I thought today I would finish getting everyone updated.

--So, on top of everything else, I've got more news that will get a certain amount of you excited -- I finally have the chance to start porting into Second Life (SL) again. Happy happy! Joy joy! In fact, it's been over two months now since I've last logged into the grid; and that's probably the biggest shame of all regarding my last job, that it just completely sucked away any chance I had to keep up-to-date in the virtual world, which means that I ended up just completely losing the momentum I had started building there, as far as getting the various SL micro-businesses set up that I had been working on.

For new readers, by the way, I should explain that that was the main reason I had been porting into the grid on a daily basis in the first place; not just for the fun of it (although admittedly it is a lot of fun), but also so I could start setting up a series of tiny little businesses there too, things like a new sex club and a new architectural firm, producing goods and services that I could sell to fellow residents for small but real amounts of money, and hopefully add to the rest of the revenue I'm generating out here in real life (RL), to maybe add up at the end to a decent yearly wage altogether (which under my definition is basically US$25,000, or about 13,000 pounds, or maybe 18,000 or so euros). And I'm still planning on doing this, actually, except that the details of the plan have changed -- partly because of what's been going on in my life, partly because of what's been going on in the grid recently.

For example, I've decided now not to open the virtual sex club ('boy-girl-other') that I had been planning on; and that's because I made the decision earlier this summer to give up swinging altogether, simply because it's starting to interfere more and more with the nonsexual things going on in my life. And yeah, I know, talking dirty with a cartoon character ain't exactly the same thing as attending a coke-fueled orgy with a bunch of strangers in the real world; but still, I suppose it's the principle of the thing, not the semantics behind what constitutes "swinging" in the first place. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'll still be visiting sex clubs while in the grid, and undoubtedly getting into trouble at some of them during some of those visits; just that for the sake of my arts center, and the other high-profile nonsexual things I'm trying to accomplish in my life these days, I thought it'd be best not to actually own and operate a sex club myself.

And then for another, the plans for my virtual architectural firm ('Fabb') have changed as well. Regular readers will remember the original plan -- to bring on a whole series of amateur builders, have them each create a unique design scheme, and then every couple of days release another "unit" (a bedroom, a dancefloor, an outdoor garden) that somehow fits into that design scheme. That way customers could pick and choose whichever units they wanted, and build semi-customized prefab homes on their property (which is where the name 'Fabb' comes from); plus have an excuse to check out our catalog every day, like how it is with clothing designers there, which is really the only way to make decent money in SL. So yeah, kinda like "Garanimals meets Habitrail meets prefabricated housing meets science-fiction." You see what I'm getting at.

I still think it's a good idea, frankly; but with all the chaos surrounding my arts center right now, I simply don't have the time to build the complex eCommerce site needed to pull off such a concept, nor the time to recruit and oversee a whole pile of amateur architects, a necessary key to making the whole thing commercially viable. So, I'm still going to open Fabb, but now simply as a one-man operation, a place where I can both slowly teach myself how to build and also occasionally sell the experiments I'm creating. After all, I still maintain the opinion I had before; that for a world where the normal laws of physics don't apply, the majority of architects there build surprisingly pedestrian, surprisingly boring buildings, voluntarily confining themselves to the physical laws that govern real-world architecture as well.

I still maintain that if an architect was to go into SL and build some really impressive things, taking advantage of such things as the lack of gravity there, they'd be able to clean up fairly easily. Like...how about a treehouse, but with both the house and tree made out of tintable glass? Or painted while, like the Tree of Gondor from Lord of the Rings? Or with different rooms hanging off the tree in ways that could never happen in RL? How about a retail store or art gallery that's a giant 50-foot-high glass cube, with layers of floating floors that customers can instantly teleport between? How about a treehouse without a tree, just rooms that completely float on their own in the middle of the air, with precarious rope bridges connecting them all?

This is what I'm talking about, people; that even in a world where all of this is possible, most architects there are still building the same crappy dumpy little ranch duplexes that I can't stand even in the real world. There's got to be a better way to do things, I keep thinking -- and if someone else isn't going to do it, then I'll just do it myself, once I finally have the time to sit down and teach myself how to build houses there. And then if they're cool enough, I'll be able to sell each of these buildings for, what, four or five dollars, the same price as a high-quality skin or elaborate clothing outfit or really kick-ass weapon for the gaming areas of the grid. And hey, I don't even need to own my own store under such a set-up! Instead I can just sell them through the amazing virtual eCommerce site SLBoutique.com, until I've raised the money (about 85 bucks) to upgrade to a professional account there, and have the right to own land and a store in the first place.

Let's see, and what else? Well, I definitely still want to re-broadcast all of my arts center's RL events in SL too; but I'm not sure at this point if I'm going to have the tech necessary to do this right away. I still want to hold "mesh" events -- where, say, a musician performs in my apartment one night for ten of her drunk friends, but then is also broadcast at the same time in the grid for a total of 40 or 50 virtual fans. And I still want to hold exclusive in-game events too; like SL's first-ever weekly poetry slam, for example, which can actually be done through Skype conference calling and then broadcast at a virtual club there in real time (given that you have the right software, which I do). So we'll see, I guess, we'll see. And if nothing else, at least I'll simply be there on a regular basis again; I've really missed playing, to tell you the truth, and am looking forward to becoming a regular again.

--And then I guess just one more thing I'll be trying to accomplish this fall; that after two years of promising to get around to it, I'm finally going to be trying to get all my archives back online, as well as new versions of all my old electronic books. See, for those who don't know, I've actually had one version or another of my website online now for almost nine years; nine years! Jeez, it sounds weird to even say it out loud. And so that's just hundreds upon hundreds of old journal entries that are currently missing from this version of my website, because of all of them originally being posted at my old one at Geocities, and me so far being either too busy or too lazy to get them imported into this new fancy-schmancy Movable Type interface of mine, which I started using for the first time just about two years ago now.

So anyway, nothing really here to report; just that I need to get off my ass and actually do it, which I'm hoping to finally do this fall. Plus of course do "final" versions of all my old books, from back when I was a professional writer; because I'm not a professional writer anymore, so would like to have a final resolution to that part of my past, for obvious reasons. So okay, that's it -- that's everything I'm hoping to get done from now until Christmas. Wish me luck!

So okay, I know, I now have two more entries here that I've been promising: first my thoughts on now posting social bookmarks to not only del.icio.us but to Digg and Netscape, and what kinds of differences I've noticed between the services; and then an essay concerning Nietzsche and cheesy Rob Lowe movies. (Don't ask; just wait for the entry.) So, yes, I will be trying to get those written and posted soon! Yes, I will! But in the meantime I've got an arts center to open, literally in a couple of weeks, so I hope you'll forgive me for taking what might be excruciating amounts of time to update this personal journal. Something always has to be given up, every time I take on something new in my life; and in this case it simply means that this personal site suffers, as long as I'm up to my eyeballs in CCLaP business. I thank you all for forgiving me, and for sticking in there nonetheless.

Bye!