That's a good question, one I've been pondering a lot too; because believe me, I ain't opening CCLaP for my health, that's for damn sure, but rather to get to a point as quickly as possible where all my bills in my life are getting paid because of it, and hopefully even a little extra, God forbid. Last year I tried opening CCLaP under a ridiculous proposition that a lot of people didn't believe; that I could literally start up all these new programs and cool projects at once, if only someone with $5,000 in spare cash could invest it in the center beforehand. And now under the newest plan, I'm yet again opening under a ridiculous proposition that a lot of people don't believe; that I can actually start raising semi-significant revenue without spending a penny in advance, or let's say just very few pennies (less than $400 altogether, when all is said and done). That's the idea, anyway, to have raised about a thousand bucks by this autumn altogether, so I can move on to the next stage of the revenue-raising plan.

So this is basically how I want to do it, which I don't mind sharing because it's a complicated plan (like always) that I think most people unable to pull off, even if they do know it in detail...

First, like I said, open this virtual photography gallery, all Flash-based and really impressive in that "ooh, that's a Flash site, ain't it" kind of way. And with audio interviews between me and the artist concerning each piece, which you can listen to by clicking a button in the corner, so that if you want it to be, it'll be like actually walking through a gallery with me and the artist as we gab about the work. And then probably creating a 3D virtual gallery as well in Second Life, because hey, I've got the land and it's all paid up until next October, for God's sake, I might as well be doing something there with it. And all of this includes a virtual exhibition catalog as well, in the form of a free downloadable PDF eBook, designed in the super-cool way I've done past books of photography. All of this combined will hopefully give the proceeding just a little bit more gravitas than simply pointing people to a Flickr account, for example, will keep photographers interested in showing there and an audience interested in checking it out.

So the idea, then, is to combine all this mentioned with some of that "print on demand" merchandise that now exists online; the places like CafePress, for example, MOOCards, Flickr's various commercial options, where they merely keep an electronic version of your artwork on file at their warehouse, and literally crank out one more t-shirt or postcard or poster or coffee mug or refrigerator magnet or whathaveyou each time someone orders it. It's not the best option for a small business, because that POD company keeps a significant amount of each sale; but it's a good option for people like me, who are going into all this without any upfront money whatsoever.

Any revenue generated from all that, then, gets split in half between the artist and CCLaP; the artist does what they want with theirs, while CCLaP's gets held as part of a book fund for the fall (but more on that in a bit). And then CCLaP has a Paypal account as well, so the virtual gallery will have a virtual glass box at the end too, in case visitors want to throw a few bucks in after the tour for a good cause. Strictly voluntarily, of course, and non-payment certainly doesn't withhold you from any of the show. Then combine that with a growing series of social events in Chicago, where I'll probably pass the hat once at each, again with about as low-pressure a sales pitch as possible.

So will all of that be enough for CCLaP to raise US$1,000 (500 pounds, 800 euros) by, say, October? That is, by not spending a penny of it, but instead keeping it in digital form where I can't get at it? Oh, and of course promoting all the merchandise through Second Life as well, on top of selling virtually matted and framed versions of the photos for just like a quarter apiece, for other avatars to hang in their own virtual homes, just as a gimmick that will get people talking and visiting the main website. If I can somehow get all of this to equal a thousand bucks by this fall, that'll be enough to publish CCLaP's first full-length paper book, 500 copies, which I'm budgeting right now at a dollar apiece to make, even though they'll be fully bound trade paperbacks (but more on that below), plus a $500 cash advance to whatever writer I sign, as an enticement for signing with CCLaP and not someone else.

So how am I going to pull off 500 trade paperbacks for 500 bucks? Easy; I'm going to make them all myself, I've decided, art-book style, with the pressboards and fabric and glue spindles and all the rest. That's one of the things, in fact, that I'm becoming more and more comfortable with this year, as I transition into yet another new way of doing things with my center; I'm finally admitting to myself plainly how much faster I am than so many other people when it comes to certain things, how much more energy I have for all this stuff than a lot of other people, of all the things I can accomplish that a full-time 9-to-5er can't. Like, I can hand-print and hand-bind, in a complex and high-quality way, 500 copies of a paperback book myself. I can, in my apartment, and bind say a hundred of them at first over a month, then keep slowing binding them as sales slowly continue through 2008.

That will give me a high-quality book at the end, in fact an even higher quality than a normal mass print run, because I'll be able to add covers of harder stock and the like. And that'll let me sell it retail for a decent price, $15 or $16, for only a production cost of a dollar, giving both CCLaP and the author much higher royalties than in most basement- and small-press situations. (That is, once you subtract marketing costs, postage, wastage, cuts for a distributor like Amazon or bookstore, and all the rest of the thousand ways they stick it to you). After all of that's paid off, again both the author and CCLaP split the rest 50/50, a much higher ratio than most presses; and since CCLaP's costs for the next book are getting paid for first, at that point I'll finally start feeling comfortable with keeping half of CCLaP's profits for myself, to actually start paying bills in my life, and re-investing the other half into growing CCLaP's budget for the next project.

Oh, and that'll let me do something else cool, too; to offer a really fancy custom version you can order directly from the website, where I actually print on the front page that that particular book was printed just for you, and leave a space for the author to sign it, and with probably special fancier covers and front leafs and the like. You know, something cool and fancy, a ridiculous $30 or something, specifically for the author's family and friends, as a way of being a little more extra supportive of the author than the usual reader. Just to give people the opportunity, you know.

Nobody does it this way because no one usually has the time or energy to do it this way; I do have the time and energy, which is why I'm trying it this way. This way is actually much better than any of the other ways; it's a higher profit margin per book, a much more intimate relationship between your press and your customers, and a much higher-quality book in their hands too. And that's how I'm hoping not only to eventually start turning a significant profit out of no upfront money, but in a way that will impress other organizations and make them say, "How does CCLaP do it like that?" And even better than all of this so far mentioned, I can do everything I've talked about by myself; no need to raise the money for an employee, no begging for a volunteer if I can't, no need to share the profits. I don't know why I tortured myself for so long, trying to do things the way that everyone else did them. I don't know why I didn't just tell myself before, "Jason, you're in a position to do things in a much different and better way than anyone else."

So, there's the plan. Will it work? We'll see! I'm willing to bet that it will, though. Maybe my numbers are a little off; maybe it'll take me until January 2008 to raise a thousand bucks, instead of October '07. As always, we'll see.

In any case, after a half-year hiatus to get over my anger and recharge my batteries, I'm now ready to take another crack at it, and am still sufficiently spooked enough by the concept of external investors at this point to go an entirely different route this time, and to pay for CCLaP's build-up myself out of the profits of each project done under its name. So that now changes CCLaP's focus as well; that instead of last year's focus on creating a community of artists and fans, with me as a low-profile yet central administrator holding things together, this time the focus is on showcasing the most legitimately brilliant unknown artists I can find, and of outputting as much artistic criticism as possible so that you all will know what I mean by "brilliant unknown artists" in the first place.

In the end it may not seem like too profound a change, in that the center's activities themselves stay almost the same -- as before, CCLaP v2 will have a blog updated multiple times a day, a Flash-based virtual photography gallery, and eventually a publishing program and live-events schedule. The main difference, in fact, is in how I'm approaching these activities as the central administrator of it all, as well as the guy in charge of selling the whole thing to the public: that before, the idea was to publicly de-emphasize my role as much as possible, in that the focus was to be on the community being formed, while now the idea very much is to build a "cult of personality" around myself (like I have with this personal site over the years), and in turn to string CCLaP's activities and featured artists around that. As I've mentioned here before, under this new way of approaching things, what's of most importance now is to establish my credentials as an arbiter of underground culture; to publish a lot of criticism, for example, do a really good job with the virtual gallery, basically convince as many people as possible why they should give a fuck when I recommend an artist they've never heard of (and why they should pay me money for the experience, by buying CCLaP's merchandise and making donations).

That's what my "Movies for Grown-Ups" series of essays at my VOX account right now is about (which will be moving over to the CCLaP site when it opens), is to help establish exactly what I like in my favorite artistic projects, and why I like it; I'll be greatly expanding that then at the CCLaP site itself, including weekly reviews of just-published novels, daily showcases of interesting photographers at Flickr, etc. Pssst -- I'm looking for books to review, especially self-published ones. Drop me a line at ilikejason [aatt] gmail.com to obtain a physical mailing address, or do something even simpler and just email me your electronic book. That said, I won't be reviewing every book I receive, especially if it ends up sucking; as longtime readers know, in fact, in general I prefer not to publish negative reviews at all, but rather concentrate on promoting great artists that most people have never heard of.

I'm hoping, then, to add a weekly podcast to the activities as well, a mix of audio and video reports, that will also be a mix of original interviews and local event recaps, something for example I pray to be even half as sharp as CoolHunting.com (i.e. I will be ripping off their look on a regular basis -- thanks, CoolHunting!). And yet again, this is done for the same purpose as the critical essays, to establish myself more in the eyes of the public as someone whose opinions and tastes they should trust, and should take a gamble on sometimes as well. Hey, I'm sensitive to the various ways CCLaP v1 failed last year, other than the ways that weren't my fault; I haven't forgotten, for example, that I was able to raise barely any money at all through public memberships, and that this can be chalked up mostly to what we're talking about, of the public not trusting enough in my abilities to be parted from 50 of their dollars. As regular readers know, I'm not exactly afraid of failures, and in general see them as an opportunity to learn and grow; and this is simply one lesson to be learned from last year, that I need to establish my reputation as a critic and administrator more, as well as get more actual projects finished and presented to the public.

In fact, that's probably the most basic lesson of all that I learned from last year's experiences -- that even tiny electronic-only plans that cost nothing to produce, but that are actually completed, are much more highly regarded than big plans that exist only in the hypothetical, no matter how many other small projects you've already completed in the past and can point to as proof that you can pull off the big ones as well, if only someone with money would simply give you the chance to do so. It's why CCLaP's goals this second time might seem so much more modest -- to publish only online this summer, for example, to do no live events at all (except possibly a few social-only ones), to concentrate more on things like the podcast that I can do with equipment I already own. In a way it's a disappointment for me, a step down in ambition from what I was trying to do last year, which was already a few steps down from my original grandiose plan in 2004; but then again, the 2004 plan required $100,000 in startup money, the 2006 plan $5,000, and this year's plan nothing. Finally, a budget I can afford!

And of course if you're paying attention, you can spot another big change that all of this means, a change more troubling in nature -- that this time I need to be far more selective over who I feature and recommend through CCLaP, that my job now consists of saying no to a lot of artists instead of saying yes. Which, again, is simply the nature of the beast: that before, this community of artists and fans was going to determine what and who CCLaP considered "cool," with me being the mostly unseen hand gently shaping this vision; but now, CCLaP will be much more a personal reflection of what and who I in particular find "cool," with you either buying into that vision or not (and adding to/shaping the conversation via blog comments, guest entries, social events and the like). So like I said, that's going to involve me having to say no to a lot more artists than before; to refuse to review certain books, not link to certain websites, not publish certain authors. It's not a big deal now, of course, because CCLaP isn't even open yet; as the center develops a bigger and bigger public profile this summer, though, I bet this'll become a bigger and bigger issue.

So anyway, that's the story for now; and hopefully by the time this fall rolls around, the things I just mentioned will have been successful enough for me to have put together around a thousand bucks, which is roughly what I need to publish CCLaP's first paper book (that is, once you figure in the advance I will be paying my first "signed" author, pretty much a necessity if I'm going to attract someone superlatively good). And hopefully at the same time, by then there will be enough of a local audience built up to support a regularly recurring show in Chicago as well; not the full schedule attempted last year, but more like how Jessa Crispin does it over at Bookslut.com, one show a month or whenever I can afford it. You know, just a more organic growth to CCLaP's activities this time, instead of first coming up with a big plan and then saying, "I need a check this big to pull this off, and you'll get your money back in a year." I'm still in theory interested in doing it that way; it's just that I got burned too bad last year to want to pursue such an option again right now.

Okay, so that's the news for now, and I do hope you'll be able to join in starting hopefully later this week, or whenever it is that we can get the new URL pointing to the right server space. Don't forget, that new address is cclapcenter.com; please spread the word!

And some random notes as well, as long as I'm here...

--So yes, all of this brings more official news as well, although I suppose most of you who used to follow along have pretty much already guessed: that I will be putting my Second Life blog, In The Grid, on hiatus for the rest of 2007, and probably won't be having anything at all to do with Second Life again until at least winter 2008, if ever. And this frankly is not just because of re-activating the arts center, although that's a big part of it; and not just because it's summer and I'm spending a lot more time outside, although that's a big part of it too; but also because the SL client software has just finally gotten too big and unwieldly for my home computer, a Mac Mini Intel. And damnit, I just bought the thing brand-new a year ago, a year ago, specifically to play Second Life, and I'm still as unemployed and broke as I was at that point, and I just absolutely cannot justify buying yet another new computer right now just to play, not when my Mini works just fine for each and every other tech thing I do in my life, from BitTorrent to video-editing to podcast creation and more.

And all of this, frankly, presents a huge sticky wicket when it comes to Second Life's biggest selling point, the thing that both its founders and its most passionate users are always arguing -- that Second Life is no mere game but an entire new reality, and a profound new paradigm shift in human interaction, and the Great Leveler of Populations, blah blah fuckity blah. But let me tell ya, Second Life ain't the great leveler of anything if you have to be middle-class and with a ton of discretionary income in order to even be there. If that's the case, then what you've got on your hands, my friend, is a videogame, and you can take all that hippie crap about "new communication platforms" and park it on a shelf at Best Buy next to the latest expansion pack for World of Warcraft. I think there's more and more non-gamers starting to realize this, in fact, and starting to realize all the hidden costs that come with being a Citizen of the Metaverse (the broadband bill, the regular computer upgrades, the endless video cards if you're on Windows); I'm not sure what exactly it means for either Second Life or Linden Lab (owner of the game), but I do know for sure that the MMO Bubble has definitely burst, or at least for me. Anyway, I know a lot of you were fans of that blog, so I hate to have to announce its medium-term closure; but that's just sometimes how it is, I guess.

--Oh, and speaking of special projects....If you're reading this in some other form besides the desktop version, you might not know yet that the special new section of my site just for my bike maps is now open; you can find it at jasonpettus.com/maps/. And that's all still going really well, to tell you the truth, not just the maps themselves but the biking in general; those who read my other personal journal, for example, will know that this Memorial Day I actually pulled off a 24-mile (39 km) ride, now officially the longest I've ever gone in my life, from my place in Uptown to the southside's Hyde Park, almost entirely along Chicago's 18-mile lakefront bike path. Although that might not be the best example, because I actually overdid it on that one; that for the first several hours of the following morning, I couldn't actually get my legs to work, which was quite the creepy little body-snatching experience indeed.

In fact, I can definitively state that the best workouts I've had yet this summer, the ones that seem to have done my body the most constructive good, are the ones for which I took my time and simply enjoyed all the details that came along the way. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, to tell you the truth, because of course when you spend as much time on the bike trails as I have this month, you're bound on a daily basis to run into that other kind of bicyclist; you know, the one with the thousand-dollar titanium racing bike, who spends their entire morning doing endless wind-sprint loops in a Lycra jumpsuit, up and down and up and down the same five-mile section of the path, with this gritty look of torture on their faces and a naked contempt for all those other cyclists actually enjoying themselves at a nice leisurely pace.

And every time I see one of these people, I can't help but to think, "Jesus, how...American." You know? Americans are the only people I know who can take something as inherently fun and carefree as stretching one's muscles under a warm sun, and turn it into a joyless daily chore that relies on external inflated expectations and the spending of obscene amounts of money. I mean, just look at fitness centers, you know? Only Americans could come up with something like that; with taking something that can be done for free with great joy while outdoors, and turning it into a grim daily responsibility done inside a windowless room after paying thousands of dollars just to be let in. But then again, I've been on a bit of an anti-consumerist kick lately, so maybe it's just me.

Anyway, my point is that I'm not one of these people; that as far as I'm concerned, the main point of bicycling to my destination in the first place is to simply enjoy the ride, and to revel in the buildings and people and pets I'm passing, to celebrate the fact that I'm outdoors and part of humanity and a small cog in this immense clockwork we call the city. As my Memorial Day trip proved once again, where things go wrong for me is when I get too ambitious, when I schedule a bike trip for more goal-oriented reasons than to simply enjoy the ride. It's an important lesson to heed, I think, one I'll be paying more attention to as the summer progresses.

--And finally...

Yes, I'm aware that I've recently been much more of a bitter little self-righteous prick than usual at my two personal journals, which was frankly already more than I probably should be. I've been going through a whole struggle this spring and early summer, in fact, a much more striking misanthropic streak than I'm normally used to, which I've been having trouble coping with and getting over -- just this overwhelming suspicion of exactly how idiotic most human beings in actuality are, and how ultimately it doesn't really matter whether the mouth-breathing swarms live or die or get exterminated like cockroaches by a charming despot or what. And in this, my old hero Wendell the Third has come through once again; he's got me reading Buckminster Fuller for the first time, as a matter of fact, who for those who don't know wasn't just the inventor of the geodesic dome, but who was also an eternal optimist about humanity who dedicated his entire adult life to figuring out how people can be happier. And his work so far is inspiring, I have to admit, and actually makes me believe in humanity a little more each time I read another chapter; although I also have to admit, I wince and roll my eyes a little every time he uses the phrase "Spaceship Earth."

Anyway...yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm dealing with a lot of abstract anger towards human beings these days, and I know that it's reflected in what I write about at my personal journals. And I'm also dealing with trying to get over this anger, because it's something I sincerely don't like about myself, and something as well that's a sincere impediment towards getting my arts center off the ground; because let's face it, no matter who you are, no one likes dealing with a bitter little asshole. As always, it's a journey, one with its ups and downs, one with its successes and failures. I feel like I'm failing a lot more than succeeding these days, when it comes to this particular subject; but that when it comes to other subjects, like my almost supernaturally successful attempt to quit smoking this year, I'm doing better than I ever expected. (87 days since I've had a cigarette, believe it or not; and yeah, fuck you too, while we're on the subject.) As always, I'll keep muddling along as I deal with these topics; and as always, even though I don't publicly express this much anymore, I am sincerely glad that you've chosen to follow along, and to check into the site on a regular basis to see how the struggle goes. I know that I rarely respond to fan mail anymore, simply because I don't know what to say anymore, now that I'm no longer pursuing a career as a writer; nonetheless, I'm glad that a certain amount of you still apparently enjoy what it is that I have to say, and I do appreciate you stopping by and checking out what is often anymore just a bunch of insane babbling.

Okay, that's enough for today. See you later.

Anyway, so my connection is finally back on again, and after a week I'm finally almost back to the place I was before it clicked off to begin with, so I thought I'd finally get a journal entry written for here and get everyone caught up on what's been going on with me. As always, it's not a lot, which is why I don't update this journal very much to begin with...

--So to begin with, it was my birthday last week -- I turned 38, which of course is now officially close enough to 40 to see the unholy light it gives off. (I kid, of course -- as regular readers know, in fact, the years leading up to my 40th have so far not been nearly as stressful as the ones leading to my 30th, a fact I'm grateful for.) It was a low-key celebration this year, to tell you the truth; about the only thing I did to mark it was go out to Sunday brunch the day before with my friend Kate (at Holiday Uptown in my neighborhood), which is always fun because it's the only excuse I have for getting drunk off bloody marys at one in the afternoon.

I also spent some time this birthday in quiet contemplation, as I do every birthday, thinking over the last 12 months of my life and how I've decided to consider them. And hmm, where do you even start with this most previous year of mine? That's the question I found myself asking on my birthday, and never quite coming to a satisfactory answer. The last 12 months, after all, saw me accept my first-ever senior-management corporate position, just to quit it two months later after discovering that my boss was lying to everyone about how much money was available. It was the year that saw me get involved with the tech industry for the first time, after spending years mercilessly making fun of people in the tech industry, just to have the whole process chew me up and spit me back out the other side. It was the year I finally opened my arts center, after two years of preparation, just to have to shut it down again three months later -- yet another victim of this lying, incompetent ex-boss of mine, himself the cause of so many of my problems last year. And most ironic, of course, this last year saw one of the biggest public acknowledgements by the media of my work ever, including mentions by Boing Boing, CNN, Reuters, USAToday and more -- but it was all because of the writing I've been doing about Second Life, something I not only consider the nerdiest fuckin' thing I've ever gotten involved with, but that seemingly confirms my critics' beliefs that I am a complete goddamn loser who is actively bringing about the downfall of intelligent society as we speak.

So, you know, how should one exactly react to all this? On the one hand, I regret almost all the tech-industry things I got involved with last year, just because it all ended up doing so much lasting damage to my overall life; but then again, I learned a tremendous amount of stuff about myself because of the experience, positive stuff I had never truly known for a fact before (for example, that I can be put in charge of 20 people and a million dollars, and actually do a pretty decent job with it). I spent about six months of last year looking like a genius in public, and six months looking like a complete fucking idiot -- so does that cancel itself out in the end, and add up to a zero?

I still don't know, to tell you the truth, and still can't quite figure out how to think about the last 12 months of my life. I'll tell you this, though -- I got really burned last year by relying on outside funding for my projects, which makes me really not in the mood to repeat the experience this year, even if that means delaying a lot of the stuff I want to do until I can fund them myself. Now that I think about it, in fact, that's probably the most important lesson I've learned from all this -- that no matter how good a situation seems, no matter how stable or assured, you never know when a person you're relying on might turn out to be a lying, thieving, sociopathic little shitbag. And by making the success of my arts center financially reliant on the empty promises a person like this was making in my life, I took something I had been slowly working on for two years and deliberately made it fall apart. That's the strongest emotion I take away from the last year of my life -- overwhelming frustration and anger over what happened to my arts center, and a determined resolution to never let such a situation ever arise in my life again even once.

This last year confirmed something that I didn't particularly want confirmed -- that if I want to pull off my projects in the way I'm really envisioning, if I want to absolutely guarantee their success, I simply have no other choice but to go out and fund them myself, most likely by doing something ridiculous and corporate during the day that pays obscene, almost illegal amounts of cash. And that's kind of a lousy realization to make, because money is the one thing I don't have these days, which means that my projects are bound to get deferred even longer than before. But man, I'll tell you, I'd rather put off entire projects for another entire year or more at this point, than to have a repeat of The Great Fucking Startup Disaster of 2006.

--So what else has been going on with me? Well, how's this for proof that the world's coming to an end? As of today, I've been cigarette-free for 10 days. Zounds! Glee! Yeah, I know, hard to believe, and is actually the longest I've gone without smoking since I first started 19 years ago. The difference, it seems, between this time and the other eight unsuccessful attempts at quitting I've made in the past, are the nicotine patches I'm using this time; far from being the glorified sugar pills I thought they'd be, they actually do seem to take the edge off the absolutely worst "I'll kill you all in your sleep" nicotine cravings. (For those who are curious, the strongest type of patch [the one I'm on, of course] emits 21 milligrams of nicotine over 24 hours, or roughly 1 mg an hour. A Marlboro Red, on the other hand, typically gives you 20 mgs of nicotine by itself; so if you smoke two cigarettes in an hour, as I often would, that's 40 mgs of nicotine versus the 1 mg of the patch.) Of course, it helps that I'm unemployed right now as well; even 20 minutes in a public location these days, like a cafe or bookstore, is enough for me to want to run around and start smacking complete strangers in the face as hard as I possibly can, FOR BEING TOO GODDAMNED STUPID TO NOT DESERVE A FUCKING SLAP IN THE FACE, YOU USELESS COCKSUCKING MEATSACK. You're on notice, people!

--And so I'm combining this with other big news these days -- I've just started the process of having 30 of my teeth replaced with fake ones this spring, which I already know from experience is going to involve at least 60 dentist visits, enough Novocaine to kill a horse, and more Vicodin than a meth addict can shake his spasmic finger at. This is in fact a Christmas present my parents got me a number of years ago -- and indeed, in 2003 I bit the bullet and had the first six teeth done, but was such a long and painful process that I've been putting off all the rest. Anyway, it's time, it's time, especially since I've now quit smoking as well, and want to start eating a lot more too. So I've got that to look forward to this spring.

--And why am I planning on eating a lot more this spring? Well, because with this cigarette cessation and dental work, I want to also start getting on my bicycle a lot more this year than I ever have in the past; in fact, my goal by Labor Day is to have biked at least once a day all summer, and for my maximum ride distance to be somewhere around 30 miles before getting fatally pooped, versus the pathetic 3 miles it was when I was a smoker. And to pull that off, I'm going to need not only much better lungs but a lot more fuel going into my system, so that my body can turn it into a lot more energy. And let's face it, I'm already dangerously underweight as it is -- around 140 pounds right now, versus my ideal 175 -- which means I still have 35 pounds to gain before I'm at zero. Ugh!

So anyway, the plan is for all this to work in tandem -- the extra food will make me want to bike more, which will give my lungs a bigger anaerobic workout, which will help motivate me to continue being a non-smoker, which will increase both my appetite and my sense of smell, making me want to eat more, etc etc. And the secret hope, of course, is that all this cyclical goodness will bleed into other facets of my life as well -- that the new physique, smile and energy will inspire me to get out a lot more, that that will bring on new business opportunities, or perhaps even a new romantic relationship (although frankly I'm still not in too much of a mood for one). Like I said, last year confirmed something for me that I didn't necessarily want to have confirmed -- that if I really do want to pull off the kind of grandiose projects I'm dreaming of these days, unfortunately I can't rely on a single other person for a single other bit of help, but instead need to literally raise every penny I need myself and perform every action required. And who knows? Maybe that really does start with something seemingly trivial like quitting smoking; maybe the willpower, self-reliance and discipline needed to pull that off will start a whole chain of resulting effects, that in some way eventually lead to me having a good $10,000 chunk of money saved by a year from now, and finally ready to open this fucking arts center without a single goddamn asshole being in a position to stop me. Oops, I'm sorry. Did I mention that I just quit smoking?

--And unfortunately, that is just about all I have to report on from here in Chicago -- the weather here has continued to be shitty, I've continued to be broke, my circle of friends has continued to be non-existent, as has my love life, and so I tend to not have any kind of fun news to report whatsoever. Although, I suppose there's this -- that I'm just about to start a new business within Second Life, a new prefabricated building business to be precise, called "Fabb" and with the motto "Houses for robots and other sentient beings." Yes, I am a fucking loser! Yes, I get that! You don't need to keep reminding me! Anyway, for fellow losers (i.e. fans of architecture, especially Mid-Century Modernism, fans of SL building, and fans of digital entrepreneurism), you can go over to my Second Life blog to read all the details behind Fabb, as well as the latest with the houses being developed.

Okay, that's it. See you later, fucking pussies. Oops, I'm sorry. Did I mention that I just quit smoking?

I'm not going to go into a long explanation of those nine years this time; I'm saving that for next year and the tenth anniversary, where I'm planning on doing a big long retrospective of the site along with a whole gaggle of screenshots to illustrate it. Now that I'm at the end of the year, though, and reflecting on the previous twelve months I've been through, I'm realizing that it's been a year of particularly crazy ups and downs for me, even more than the typical crazy ups and downs I have just as a member of the arts community. This particularly came to light, in fact, when I sat down earlier today to write a "year in review" email for an overseas friend, who I was pretty sure doesn't read this site regularly anymore; for those who also don't follow along regularly anymore, or who might be new readers (or who might primarily know me through my Second Life blog as cartoon character Miller Copeland), here's a copy of that letter, pasted below:

Started the online version of my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP), this spring. Things went fine.

A friend in Chicago founded a new internet startup this summer, and asked me to come on full-time as COO, after saving the company from ruin while he was out of the country attending a funeral. This was going to immediately bring me (at the end of the summer, anyway) the $2,000 or so I needed to start up the live-events schedule at CCLaP; and if things went well and the startup got bought by Yahoo or whoever, I was set to become one of those fabled startup millionaires.

But alas, at the end of the summer I discovered that the owner had been lying to everyone about how much money was available; this led to a confrontation, which led to me quitting while still being owed over $3,000 in back pay (which I'm still owed to this day). This left me with no money to start up the live events at CCLaP, which means I had to cancel the program just a week before the first event was to be held; and this got me so angry and depressed that I just put the entire center altogether on hiatus for four months, until January 2007.

With suddenly a lot of time on my hands and no money or job, I decided on a whim to start up a new blog, a culture one about this odd videogame called Second Life, which I call "In The Grid." Done just to amuse myself, it has interestingly and unexpectedly become the fastest-growing creative project I've ever done: in just four months online now, I have almost 5,000 daily readers there; am accepting a growing amount of advertising; have been mentioned repeatedly by USA Today, and also by CNN, Reuters, BoingBoing and more; and even managed to snag an interview with the CEO of Second Life last month.

So, I'm going into 2007 basically expanding on that, and hoping to add a PHP events calendar for Second Life to my regular website; if I can convert those 5,000 daily readers into people who come back multiple times a day (to check an events calendar, for example), that shoots up total pageviews dramatically, which then gives me a chance to actually get signed with someone like Federated Media (who does all the ads for BoingBoing, Digg and more) and actually make a living with it. We'll see, anyway. In the meantime, I'm finally teaching myself Adobe Flash for the first time, specifically so that I can create a cool multimedia virtual photography gallery at the CCLaP website. Once next month rolls around, in fact, I'm finally getting CCLaP up and running again; this time, though, only as a place that releases free electronic media. Once a month I'm going to do a new show in the virtual gallery, where I'll also do Skype interviews with the artists that I will mix in with the Flash interface, so that it sounds like you're "walking" through the gallery with us and listening to what they have to say about each piece. I'll then combine this with free electronic books, in various forms (PDF, PDB, LIT, Sony Reader, etc) -- both catalogues of gallery shows and books of literature.

I'm going to do this for, whatever, nine months altogether, probably, just being my own curator and handpicking a series of artists around the world to feature; then combine it with a re-activation of the daily blog, to hopefully start building up traffic there, as well as "authority on the arts" in the eyes of the public. This August, then, I'm hoping to have saved up enough money for a two-week trip to California; first a week in SoCal, visiting my brother and sister-in-law in San Diego and several friends in LA, then a week in the Bay Area, visiting old writer friends and finally attending the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco (big geeky thing there once a year for those who most habitually play SL). After that, then, hopefully in September 2007, I'll finally be ready to start up the live events at CCLaP and have them actually be produced.

So anyway, for those who needed a catch-up with how this year's been for me, there it is; yeah, pretty nuts, more nuts than I wanted it to be, although I suppose that everything is turning out fine at the end, which tends to happen to me a lot. And as I partly mentioned, part of my time these days is being filled with a new geeky obsession, which is Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash); after a decade of watching my friends using it, and years of actually owning the authoring software, I'm finally teaching it to myself, via the excellent guide put out by Lynda.com. But I'm only on page 3 right now, so don't actually have anything to report; more thoughts coming at later dates, I'm geekily sure.

And then the other thing I'm starting to futz around with for the first time in machinima; or for those who don't speak Japanese gamer, the process of making videos within a full-time 3D graphical universe. I'm doing it through Second Life, unsurprisingly enough; there's a built-in videocamera in the interface on top of a still camera, meaning that you can shoot videos just as easily as take pictures. If you're reading this on a device with Flash Player, in fact (desktop, laptop, RSS reader or mobile device), you should be seeing a version above of the first machinima I did, which you can view right this moment. Anyway, I'm working on my second one as we speak, one that's going to be a lot more slick and (I think) interesting; as always, more news as I have it.

Okay, and I was also going to go over what I got for Christmas, including my first-ever iPod, but I've got too much stuff to still do today, and need to get going and actually doing them. So that'll be coming in the next update, arriving...er, God only know when. Sorry!

So, I've seen the Screech sex tape now. And you know what? It's exactly as pathetic, immature, embarrassing and unerotic as you would expect a sex tape by Dustin Diamond to be. And I mean, seriously, there are so many sad things associated with the making of this video, I can't even determine which is the saddest:

--That the women are not in fact hookers like I had thought, but rather platonic friends, a bride-to-be and her maid of honor, staying in the same hotel as Diamond that weekend because of a bachelorette party?

--That these two platonic friends would so effortlessly throw themselves into a lesbian porn scene, for no other reason than that they're drunk and in a hotel suite in Wisconsin with a C-list celebrity?

--That the bride would have sex with Diamond a week before her wedding, for the same reason?

--That Diamond refers to his sad little dick as "The Monster," without a trace of self-consciousness or irony?

--That Diamond approaches the seduction of these women in the same cloying, desperate way as a teenage boy trying to get his girlfriend's bra off in the back of his car?

--That it works?

--That even with all of this, the sex itself is still awkward and uninspiring, with the three so self-conscious of their roles in this midwestern chain-motel menage-a-trios that they might as well not even have had sex?

--Or that even with all of that, all three of them still ended up signing release forms for the video, doubtless in exchange for a few thousand dollars?

Videos like this make the whole recent debacle with Michael Richards make a lot more sense; that when has-been stars find themselves in suburban Ohio on a random August night, being exploited by all the dumpy NASCAR fans around them in both good and bad ways, simply to provide whatever small thrill they can to their passionless lives, it becomes easy for those has-beens to slip into just the absolutely worst stereotypical star behavior possible. Watching poor little Screech go through his sad little motions of having this supposed ultimate male fantasy, watching the sad little authority that he can only command anymore while in a hotel suite in Wisconsin with two drunk housewives, makes me understand a lot more how someone like Richards can just blow his top at a random comedy club one night in such an insane way; because it's all part of an elaborate game all of them are playing, where the audience is paying money to gawk at the weirdo who used to be famous, and the has-been puts up with it in order to collect the money, and to hold on to whatever last shred of "stardom" they have.

Er, okay, I'm feeling better now. Can you tell I've been in a weird mood the last several weeks?

Things continue to go well with In The Grid, the standalone culture blog about Second Life that I've been doing for about three months now; in fact, I'm getting new content posted there nearly every day, for those who miss the regular updates here, although I realize that it's not quite the same thing. For those who are curious, by the way, I don't write for any one particular audience in mind there; half of my thoughts are for those who are regular residents, the other half for those who have never played Second Life at all but are curious about virtual realities. Plus I've been scoring some pretty good coups there lately too -- I snagged an interview, for example, with the company's CEO, Philip Rosedale, where we specifically talked about the high-school and undergraduate dreams he used to have that led to the grid being formed in the first place. I also now finally have a second staff member; it's Steven Cann from Melbourne, Australia, who's now designing ITG's monthly PDF magazine, a veteran paper-based graphic designer whose day job is at the slackerrific Lonely Planet. Hi, by the way, to all you Australians and Kiwis! That section of the world in fact accounts for my fourth largest group of readers; my fans down under have been inviting me to visit for years (to spend two weeks, in one person's words, "getting drunk on the beach each day, and getting laid each night"); but alas, I still have not been able to afford the plane ticket. One day soon, my friends -- one day soon!

Have I told you the New Plan yet, by the way? Ah, the post-fucking-internet-startup-disaster New Plan! The new plan is this; to try to have enough money saved by next August to self-publish a new paperback book, again called "In The Grid" and basically a collection of the best 40 or so entries from the blog, and also afford a two-week Greyhound trip west from Chicago, to do a pretty busy book tour, ending in San Francisco for next year's annual Second Life Community Convention, basically a science-fiction convention but with sexier people and more drugs (or so I'm told; and I mean, come on, it's San Francisco). My goal for next year, in fact, is the same as I when I went to both science-fiction conventions and literary ones in my youth; to get fucked up, sell a lot of books, and perhaps get laid by the end of the weekend. If I can afford 10,000 copies, for example, at wholesale price, I only need to sell about 3,500 to break even; and with a well-planned tour, at a time when hardly any full-length books of MMO cultural essays exist, where I do a lot of online conversion of audiences along the way, leading to eventual steady Amazon sales, leading to a grand orgy of publicity at the SLCC for the book, I could sell 3,500 copies in two weeks. And with the interest in Second Life that there is these days, I'm pretty sure I could eventually sell all 10,000, too (or 9,500, that is -- 500 would go out to critics, litbloggers, etc).

Only problem; I need a lot of money upfront to do this. And I don't know if I'll have the money by then. Hmm, we'll see.

And speaking of my long-time personal interests suddenly meshing with Second Life -- guess who's finally executive-producing his first full-length alternative-reality game (or ARG)? That's right, yours truly, who had been holding out hope for years that he might get a recruitment letter from 42 Entertainment (makers of both the Evan Chan and 'ilikebees' ARGs), but is starting to realize that that's probably never gonna happen (sigh). So instead, I'm doing a limited-edition one, that everyone understands ahead of time is a game, run for a month only, where players are exclusively SL members, and 'winning' constitutes a combination of building skills, clothing skills, writing and design skills, and willingness to be an active part of the game.

I'm doing the entire thing as a blog fundraiser, in fact, to hopefully raise the US$1,500 I need to buy a minimalist but still scorching-fast Windows gaming system, so that I'll have more stories for the blog and higher-quality screenshots, a bigger depth of field, the ability to shoot Quicktime movies actually while in the grid and tooling around, all kinds of cool stuff. Instead of a PBS-style beg job this time, I thought, I'd actually run something that people will hopefully find worth paying, whatever, $5 or $10 to play; both as something fun, as money going to a good cause, and as a chance to win very real, very cool prizes. Details coming another time, but basically what I'm looking to do is to create a detailed science-fictiony/steampunky backstory, with all of the players becoming roleplaying 'characters' within that fictional set of rules and etiquette. Partly, then, it becomes like I said a building competition; part of your overall score is determined by what in-game clothes and dwellings you create to support the game. And partly it's a writing competition; you can score extra points by writing an original short story that takes place in-game, or are an active RP chatter at live game events, as voted on by your fellow players. Partly it's a gridwide scavenger hunt, held throughout the month of the game; partly it's a murder-mystery game, where you collect clues and solve puzzles. I'll act pretty much in the Sean Stewart role at 42; as the top-level puppetmaster of the entire thing, putting together all the behind-the-scenes details and recruiting all the secret moles.

I need a lot of help putting it together, which I'm thinking of starting in mid-January; interested? I need a couple of fellow smarties who would like to be grand puppetmasters, who can think both in the big view and in the small; builders and clothing designers, particularly store owners who would like to do a little work in exchange for corporate sponsorship of the ARG; stores and individuals who wouldn't mind hiding clues at their space that month, or sponsoring live events, again for a corporate sponsorship; and lots of donated gifts, things that people really would get excited about winning. I could use a visual artist too, frankly, as well as a marketing/sales person or two, although these aren't as necessary as the positions mentioned previous. If you'd like to be involved with something that will hopefully be pretty cool, and that might get you a job at a real agency that will actually pay you money, please let me know at ilikejason [at] gmail.com.

And now, ladies and gentlemen...

--Indie-rock musicians recording children's albums.

--Your new fucking cupcake business.

--People who parlay major publishing deals out of websites featuring photos of cute animals.

--The pissing contest between Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton.

--Zunes. And Wiis, for that matter.

--Your fucking MySpace page.

--How much I should be watching "Veronica Mars," and why it is that I'm not already watching "Veronica Mars."

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Okay, I think that'll be it for today, because I still need to get into the grid tonight and get a story written for the SL blog tomorrow; off to post this now. Sorry again I haven't updated this personal journal in so long; but unfortunately you can expect more of this same this winter, as my personal life continues to be not exciting enough to be worth writing about. Sorry! Invite me to something fun, and make it worth my while to update!

Okay, I admit it, that recent circumstances in my life are all adding up to me being a pretty big loner here in Chicago this autumn. Start with the rapidly falling temperature; add that I'm currently working from home; and that that job is to do a culture magazine about a virtual reality; and that it's not making very much money yet, which means I'm too broke to go out much; and that because of my rather nasty experiences this summer, I'm in no rush right now to hang out with my fellow humans in the first place. So yeah, I've been spending a whole lot of time at home these days, most of my waking hours in fact, which is why there's never anything going on with me and so why I never have updates these days for this personal journal.

But that's also good news to you online readers; it means I can finally get around to some of those major projects I've been promising all year that I'd be getting to, once the craziness of this summer was over and I was having a lot more alone time to begin with. And so if you're visiting the actual website right now, versus the feed, you'll see one example of what I'm talking about; I finally got off my ass and finished the newest version of this site's design scheme, the twelfth in fact since starting this site in December 1997.

Yeah, it's about time, I know! Version 11 of this site was done when I was just starting to teach myself the CSS2 protocol for the first time; and it was also before I had home internet access, so had to load everything at a cafe, test it, go home and debug, go back to the cafe and start over, every time I wanted to make changes. Since then I've designed two other new websites from scratch, have learned a lot more about both Movable Type and CSS2, and also of course can debug my code in a matter of seconds now instead of a matter of days, which makes a huge difference, believe me. It's been something I've been wanting to do for awhile now, get an actual sophisticated, fully decent design scheme up here to my main personal site; so over the last week or so I've finally had the time to sit down and do it.

As regular readers can see, it's not too terribly different than version 11 in overall layout; there's still the date and title at the top, then my logo, then the main menu, and then that day's entry, with a bunch of supplementary information shuttled off to the left there. But I consider the details of version 12's layout to be much more nuanced than 11's, and to take advantage more of the relationship between content and white space; and I've also trimmed out a lot of the extraneous crap that used to be in the sidebar, since a lot of that was designed for when I was going out a lot, and I'm now not going out a lot.

Then there are other changes I'm working on as we speak; like, I want to start offering a playable version of my last video and audio recordings here in the sidebar, as well as shots of my last few Flickr uploads; so I'm busy right now hunting down the right code for all of that, and hope to have it all pasted correctly into the sidebar soon. Also of course, technically right now (Monday night Chicago time) it's just the front page that contains the new design scheme; over the course of tonight and tomorrow morning I'll be getting all the archived templates switched over as well. And then finally, I've got to sit down soon and figure out what's going on with the Jason Pettus Instant Locator™ -- my Treo hasn't been able to make the connection for a long while now, and I don't know if it's the Treo's fault or the website's, or whether my XML-RPC address is still current, or where to go to check all that information, ugh, the annoyances of bleeding-edge software, I'm tellin' ya. So anyway, I'll hopefully get that figured out soon, and then you'll start seeing regular updates of the JPIL again as well.

And since the other two blogs I'm maintaining these days both use a rather cold Helvetica scheme, I thought I'd go the opposite direction here for this update and use a warm Garamond (or Times New Roman, for those of you who don't have Garamond loaded on your computer). Just a change of pace, you know. Anyway, let me know what you think if you want, at ilikejason [at] gmail.com; I'm always interested in hearing opinion about web design.

So speaking of my hermit-like autumn, should I go ahead and tell you about what little else is going on in my life these days, as I spend the majority of my time cooped up here and traveling through the virtual world pumped through my broadband account? Well, the biggest news is the one that's obvious to regular readers; that my new blog about Second Life, In The Grid, is continuing to pick up steam in a way that hardly any other creative project I've ever tried has done. It's a bitter irony for me, of course, because the only reason ITG came about is because all my previous plans for this fall fell apart at once, at the end of this summer, and the Second Life blog was about the only thing I could think of doing that I could actually afford. But lo and behold, here it is five weeks later, and I have 1,500 unique readers a day there already, half of them regular readers, and with the blog mentioned already by such places as Boing Boing, Miss Snark Literary Agent, Clickable Culture and more. And with it being listed by Technorati now as the 12th most popular Second Life blog on the planet.

Why is ITG picking up such a fanatical audience so fast, when so many of the other things I've tried over the last several years (most of them much more sensible-sounding) haven't? Beats the hell out of me, you know? Part of it I suppose is because of the growing interest in Second Life beyond the people actually playing it habitually; those who are interested in MMO platforms in general, or virtual realities in general, or those who are on the cusp of signing up and are interested in learning just a little more. This is a big reason I write ITG the way I do, in fact; so that it acts as a sort of bridge between daily players who are in the know, and non-players who are just trying to get an idea of what's going on. I use a lot of slang, but also include a lexicon; I refer to both real life and Second Life an equal amount of time. That keeps interest healthy among both the Web 2.0 crowd and the existing residents of the grid; it's what keeps ITG straddling the line between a fanzine and a sociological journal, allowing it to pick up fans of both.

So I'm not going to complain; I'm just going to keep writing it, hopefully a 500- to 1000-word article of original content every 24 hours, although the continual shutdowns of the grid in the last week have made that more and more difficult. Now that I've got my first healthy chunk of daily readers, I'm looking into more sophisticated forms of advertising at my disposal (i.e. outside ad networks); I'm going to see if maybe I can't find a deal for ITG that will let me suddenly bring in significantly more revenue than I have been before. We'll see, anyway. In the meantime, though, like I said, just keep on keeping on with the publication; a new article a day, a new PDF magazine a month, get the HUD version of issue 1 done this week as well, in preparation for our postponed release party happening this Friday, a week late since the fucking grid was down last week when it was supposed to happen. You know, what all blogs do that end up really popular; just keep it regular, keep it consistent, and keep it entertaining.

And hmm, what else? Well, here's a nerdy loner thing I've been getting into this autumn that I could share with you; I've started having classic novels delivered to me a couple pages a day via email. Cool! It's a free service called DailyLit.com, in fact, that does a stupidly simple and ingenious thing; they're taking a growing amount of public-domain books, breaking them down into chunks that take five to ten minutes to read apiece, then setting up a mailing list to send out these chunks to people on a daily basis. So I'm reading three books right now, for example, all of which will end at radically different dates; HG Wells' The Time Machine, which will be over in about a month; EM Forster's Howards End, which still has a little over three months to go; and Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, still with a whopping seven months of daily five-minute updates before it will finally be finished.

It's cool, because if I really do keep up with it every day, I find that I can easily hold the plots of four different books in my head; the three I'm reading by email in my case, plus one in paper form I'm always carrying around with me (which happens this week to be Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age). And the three by email are only 15 minutes a day; which since I can actually access through my Treo, makes for perfect reading on a train ride, in a coffeehouse, even during a longish walk. That's one of the things I love so much about my Treo, in fact; that it's a full-blown PDA, not just a cellphone with minimal web capabilities, which means I'm able to transfer a lot of daily online reading to my mobile excursions away from my crappy apartment. Nerd! Fucking nerd! Yeah, I know. What can I say?

So let's see, do I have anything else at all to report these days? Well, you know how it is; that even when you work from home, and you live by yourself, and you hardly get out at all under social circumstances, you still have a real need to establish daily routines for yourself. So I have a pretty rigorous sleep schedule I still maintain, for example -- in bed by 11pm, awake by 7am -- and I always stop for about two hours in the middle of the day to go to a coffeehouse, and do the crossword and eat a muffin and sometimes flirt with cute girls and all the other crap one does in a cafe. There are a lot of daily routines I simply get out of the way in the early morning hours (emails, RSS reading, Second Life tips), then a time when I'm very busy on the magazine, then times when I'm laying around watching television.

They're not things that make for a very exciting journal entry, but things that are important to me right now -- a sense of the day-to-day, of repeated times for repeated duties, and with a chance each day to be among my fellow humans for a couple hours as well (something important for me to schedule in; I'm notorious for forgetting it if left on my own). It's just...a time for work right now, you know. A time when I'm in most days, for most of the day, just doing work and getting those big items slowly off my lists. By this time 24 hours from now, hopefully version 12 of this site will be completely checked off; then it'll be time to move on to another one, I suppose, most likely the long-awaited overhaul of the GAD catalog. So anyway, that's it for now; and I hope that all of you are doing well, no matter where that is.

Greetings to one and greetings to all, from a rare night out for me at the Bar on Buena, just a couple of blocks from where I live (Uptown, Chicago, USA), having a Guinness and enjoying a random hour out of my apartment tonight. It's been a summer of a lot of ups and downs for me, as regular readers already know; first two months in a senior management position at this brand-new internet startup; then a disastrous end to that job, including getting screwed out of $3,000 in pay; which then led to me not being able to start the live-events schedule of my new arts center when I wanted, for lack of money, which frustrated me to no end. So then a decision to push off the live events until spring 2007, and to bring the publishing program up to now, and also to finally start a culture magazine about Second Life (SL), an idea I've been fiddling around with for six months now.

And so, at least a little cool thing has come out of all the chaos and frustrations; that even after just a week, I'm discovering that being an "embedded journalist" within SL is one of the more fascinating things I've done in a long time. And that's because SL is an endlessly fascinating thing, an entire virtual city 750,000 strong, with a landmass larger than Boston if you were to display it at actual size. And let's not forget, a place where all means of creating content is not only free but open-source, where creators can charge real money for their creations, and where none of the crap buildings of a physical city (the gas stations, the warehouses, etc) need to exist. And with no laws, an anarchy-based style of self-government, where almost nothing is illegal and there is no way to actually physically hurt a person. So you know, imagine moving to a place like Toronto, but where every building is some magical breathtaking thing, and where just about every vice known to humans has a legal cottage industry supporting it.

It's fascinating to be a coolhunter in such an environment, a reporter of the underground, because there's such a higher concentration of cool, underground things there. And since SL is such a close and complex approximation of reality, it turns out that all the traits of a good underground journalist are of benefit there too; but unlike real life (RL), it costs about nothing extra there to do the things that make for being a good reporter of the underground. Like take this basic lesson about life, for example; that if you want to be a Michael Musto or a columnist for Nerve or whatever, part of the struggle is simply to be seen on the scene -- to attend as many events as possible, meet as many people as possible, get the right people knowing that you're the one they should come to with gossip or interesting new things. But in RL, this involves a lot more than simply being inquisitive, a good writer and someone who doesn't judge others; it involves lots of expensive cab rides too, very long evenings out, hours upon hours of standing in corners of smoky clubs. It involves stamina and an expense account, the willingness (and fortitude) to do coke with the right people in some stinky toilet stall at three in the morning. Sorry to all of you who didn't realize this before; but if you want to be a genuine reporter of the underground culture, someone noticed by the mainstream, all the things mentioned above come with it.

In SL, though, most of these limitations are removed; one can travel there instantly to wherever one wants by free teleport, can safely hang out in their homey apartment all night instead of dark smoky clubs (or trash-filled alleys in some cases). I can be a socialite there, without the trust fund usually needed to support such a lifestyle. I can be Andy Warhol without the Factory, Tristan Tzara without Cabaret Voltaire. Anyone can, as a matter of fact, which is the other big pleasurable surprising thing -- that almost no one does. Given the chance to instantly visit a million cool things for free, most players of SL still stick to a tiny amount of choices, and then have the balls to bitch about how they never have anything to do.

It's this aspect of the human condition, when all is said and done, that keeps journalists like me and publications like mine in business; the desire to always want to know of the new and interesting, but not wanting to wade through all the extraneous crap that comes with finding it. If you're like me, you've probably assumed that this had mostly to do with the aforementioned money and energy constraints; so it's surprising to be in the grid and see the same lack of action among most, even with the money and energy constraints removed. But hey, I'm not complaining! Indeed, this was the final detail that convinced me to open the new blog and mag -- that I love checking out new things and writing stories about them, love interviewing random strangers, and will happily do it for money and notoriety if no one else is going to.

And I am in fact having quick and profound success with "In The Grid" (ITG); over 300 readers every day already, according to Google Analytics. That's after only a week and a half, mind you; it took me six months to gather that audience when I first started this personal journal. It's a role I relish too, I've discovered, being the hipster reporter/participant who's always in the know, well on his way to knowing everyone there worth knowing. It's old territory for me, after all; I always seem to fulfill this role, no matter what community or activity I get involved with, which I guess makes me a "connector" under Malcolm Gladwell's little "Tipping Point" thing. I thrive at being a connector, in fact; of randomly stumbling across a lot of stuff and saying, "Yes, this is going to be the one thing that a lot of other people will be interested in too." That's what makes me a good social bookmarker too, and what also helped me succeed as a self-publisher in the '90s.

And can I admit this? It's weird but true; that being a culture reporter in SL really brings out the queeny, girly side of my bisexuality, on top of everything else. Because to be a good culture reporter, you need to be a part of the culture; to show up to a lot of events, dress flash, be flamboyant, have no fear. Since I can change outfits in literally 30 seconds in the grid, in transit from one event to the next, this is precisely what I do; I burn through five or ten outfits over the course of one evening. Five to ten hairstyles, five to ten tattoos, swapping gender back and forth every other change. I hop from event to event, hyper-appropriate for whatever the situation is; unlike RL, this is what lets me go from a tech event to a fetish club without even slowing down, from a fashion show to a vampire ball.

I do this more as a woman than as a man, frankly; and that's because there's so much more cool shit available for women there. Seriously, it's worse than even RL; there are 10 times the amounts of stores in the grid, 15 times, for women's clothing than men's. And so I find myself shopping like a fucking girl would while there; making sure that I can find things that make me look pretty, that make me stand out, that are different from what all those other bitches (er, my fellow ladies) are wearing. God, I'm such a fag! I never worry about this shit as a man; just slap on a black sweater and black jeans, and you're good to go. So how funny for me to suddenly care about it in SL as a woman, flitting from fashion show to danceclub, half a dozen times over the course of an evening.

I'm glad for all the early successes I've been having with ITG, for sure; but it's also weird for sure that of all the things I've now attempted the last couple of years, the one most quickly taking off is a blog about a virtual city populated by cartoon characters. A little snobbiness on my part maybe? Maybe. More, I think, that is just still seems like such a surreal thing; that one could make one's living by reporting on player activity within a videogame. If it can't be explained to my mom in five seconds, there's still a part of me that doesn't consider it a legitimate career, you know? I think that's a thing that all creative professionals carry around with them, that never completely goes away. Even when you have success in a strange niche thing, you sometimes get tired of having to explain that strange niche thing to every person you meet at a cocktail party. I've been having to do long explanations at cocktail parties of what I do for over a decade now; I guess maybe I was looking forward to the day where I could simply say, "I own an arts center." I'm glad for the success I'm having with ITG; just that it's unexpected, I guess, and takes me straight back to the situation where it takes me ten minutes to explain to people what exactly I do. It's fun to be in that position at 23; you get a little tired of it by 37.

Sigh. I'm not complaining. I feel blessed a lot of the time that I'm in this position, to take several decades of professional experience and apply it to something cutting-edge, something a lot of my peers can't do because of being entrenched at traditional jobs. I don't know. I'm just still upset, I guess, that the live-events schedule for CCLaP didn't work out; that's something I had been working on for nine months, and the disappointment over it failing doesn't go away easily. So I'm the first-ever world-weary reporter for a virtual environment, perhaps. The Graham Greene of Second Life? The Bill Bryson? That wouldn't be so bad, I guess. There are worse things in the world to be than the Graham Greene of the Metaverse.

Okay, so thanks again to everyone's who checking out ITG these days; and I hope you'll all stick around and become regular readers. Talk with you again soon.

It's...frustrating. Very, very frustrating. I won't kid you. Ever since the beginning of July, in fact, when I first stepped in and helped save an ex-friend's internet startup from falling apart, my entire life has seemed odd and off-track, to the culmination of this week and realizing that my autumn plans for CCLaP aren't ready. And doubly frustrating, because every other aspect of it besides the financial one was going just fine; I was slowly gaining a real public interest in the shows, enough that I was feeling safe about meeting our break-even audience quotas, gaining more and more publicity, having the actual logistical details coming more and more into focus. So frustrating that all of that could be killed off so profoundly, just from a lack of a thousand bucks to buy some mics and speakers and flyers, what should be the most insignificant part of the entire process. And triply frustrating, because by all rights I should have this thousand bucks right now, and a lot more, which I legally earned at this crazy internet-startup day job I had this summer; but the owner ended up fucking me over at the end of it all, and screwing me out of over $3,000 I was owed, in this really petty way so that I will have to sue him if I want to see any of it, no matter how in the wrong he knows he is.

Frustrating, yes. Very, very frustrating. But it's just the reality of the situation, and there's not a whole lot I can do about realities, no matter how unpleasant they are. I don't have any money right now, so can't start the live-event program for my arts center. That's how it is, and so that's how it's going to be. And it'd be easy to be overwhelmed by cynicism and defeatism at this point; I know, because I spent the better part of this week wallowing in it. And thinking about how maybe I should just hang the entire experiment up, declare it a failure and go lead a normal life, one that's nice and quiet and private, where I just work for some company and get a paycheck and don't blab on the web about every little high and low in between. I thought a lot this week about doing that. I won't kid you.

But then a snotty little part of me thought, "No one likes reading about a whiny self-pitier." I certainly don't; do you? I love reading about people who have failures, and are determined not to let things like that stop them, and jump right back into whatever crazy new project they actually can accomplish at that point. So yeah, I ultimately decided not to be one of those people who hang it all up and go off to live some quiet, unassuming life; I've decided to just accept the reality of this situation, own up to it, then figure out what I actually can accomplish right now.

That's sort of the beauty of my arts center's plan, after all; that there's a whole lot of things I want to do with it, and so therefore have the implementation plan laid out as a series of stages, spanning out a good five to ten years at this point, all the way to the point of owning our own permanent physical space in Chicago. So, just as I'm pushing off one part of the plan until spring 2007, for lack of money, I can bring another part of the plan from next spring up to right now -- the publishing program, that is. Because fuck it, I can do the publishing program right now; I can solicit great photos and great literature myself, edit the work myself, lay it out all groovy-like myself, publish it electronically myself, promote it online myself, and collect voluntary payments myself. All for not an extra dime added to my current budget, using tech I already own, and needing no additional employees whatsoever.

Goddamnit! Nobody can fucking stop me from making electronic books and magazines! No matter how broke I am, no matter how little outside interest there is, I can still write and edit great material, and lay it out into a great-looking electronic publication. And so that's what I'm going to do for the next six months; I'm going to start up and really obsessively concentrate on CCLaP's publishing program, instead of its live-event program. And I'm going to maybe make some money, definitely make a lot of fans, for sure generate a lot of interest in what CCLaP is doing, so that by next spring we hopefully do have the structure and financing needed to finally start our live-event program, and maybe have it work this time.

Ugh! It's a struggle for me to remain optimistic and upbeat these days; frustrations and setbacks seem to have been piling up around me all summer, sometimes so tall that I can't see over them. But I'm going to stay optimistic, or at least keep trying to as much as I can; because I've been down that other road before, and know that it's no less frustrating. I spent a lot of my twenties giving in to depression and bitterness, defeatism and the like, and got really nothing more out of it than yet more depression and more bitterness; so now I try to do the opposite, and at least try to salvage something good and new out of every setback.

Like, here's something -- I now have the time to start my own monthly culture magazine about Second Life, something I've idly thought about doing for six months now, but never had the time before because of CCLaP's live-event schedule formerly starting in the fall. God, it's just so needed there right now, you know? It's such a random and chaotic world there in Second Life, and the makers of the videogame no longer provide a central web location to announce news and the like (they got sick of all the flame wars so decided to just shut down their entire forum system, believe it or not); so in the void, there have now been nearly 15 new SL-related publications open up in the last six months. Yeah, 15, I shit you not; but with almost none of them coming from people with real-life (RL) publishing backgrounds, most of them full of beginning design and editing errors, a lack of focus on theme or attitude, or just plain ol' crappy layout and stories.

That's something I can do; I can design shit good. And I can write shit good. And I can edit other people's shit good. And I'm already an insanely inquisitive person, with no fear and no sense of moral boundaries; so I make the perfect person to run a magazine about the "underground culture" of Second Life. Because that's another big mistake most of these other culture magazines are making; they're purporting to report on really unique, unknown stuff, but then all end up covering the same tourist spots and "shocking" articles about how you can have sex with furries while there. I'm already going to stuff for fun that would make for a highly intriguing magazine or blog; fetish fashion shows, vampire balls, Gorean cuffing ceremonies (don't ask), unpublicized ambient raves, violent "edgeplay" sex clubs, the works.

So, I thought, why not a two-fisted publishing approach, something else that none of the SL magazines are doing right now? Publish a monthly PDF magazine, doing in-depth profiles of the most interesting individuals and groups I met that month; and then a daily blog, run kinda like Michael Musto's gossip column, where I'm always out at crazy underground stuff, taking pictures, writing witty and snotty blog entries about what they were like. Then run ads, of course, with those who buy a magazine ad getting a free month of a blog ad too; and with my decade now of RL experience in interviewing artists, just pile up a whole crapload of intriguing conversations with intriguing people, and have lots of content for each issue whether anyone else contributes or not. A cross between a zine and a magazine, if you see what I'm getting at; still opinionated, still a one-man outfit, but with mainstream readership and advertiser interest. It's something a lot of my readers have urged me to do with this personal site for years, after all, is run banner ads; but if I'm going to accept paid advertising, why not do something natural for it like a traditional magazine?

So the magazine, lots of ebooks through CCLaP from writers and photographers, plus teaching myself Flash finally and building a really cool virtual photography gallery there too, complete with MP3 audio interview with the artist about each work being seen, as if you were actually walking through a physical gallery with them and listening to them talk about the work. Plus keep signing up Fellows to CCLaP, keep featuring creative work there, keep mentioning other cool things going on in the arts, and keep building up a fan base. Oh, plus there's this; that finally, finally today I became a Premium member of Second Life, which means that I'm finally going to own land there for the first time, which means I can get to work right away on CCLaP's first virtual gallery and performance space.

I can do everything mentioned in the last paragraph without spending any extra money, or needing a single other person's help, or needing a single other piece of tech equipment besides what I already own. Damnit. So that's what I'm going to do, because I can. Damnit! And because these are still all going to be cool things, popular things that impress people, although in my eyes not quite as cool as producing regular live events. It's something, though, something constructive instead of (self-) destructive, something that requires only time and skill, both of which I have an abundance of right now, and a lack of everything else. And something that keeps CCLaP's momentum moving in a forward, ever-enlarging direction, instead of on permanent hiatus or worse yet shut completely down. And so that's good, although still frustrating, yet weirdly hopeful, yet unsurprisingly depressing. You can take the boy out of the drama, but never the drama out of the boy. Sigh.

So, that's the plan. And now if you'll excuse me, I'm fucking busy; I've got to get the CCLaP website redesigned as soon as I can, and the Second Life magazine blog designed as soon as I can, and interviews scheduled and photos taken and lots and lots of piled-up landmarks to check out. So that's it; I'm off to work again. Talk with you again soon, and don't forget to start reading my new Second Life blog starting Monday.

--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!

For those who don't know, I've been writing online about sex now for about seven years; most of that merely as one of many subjects I talk about here at my goofy free journal, but also with a year as a professional columnist for a British magazine that's no longer being published, as well as my infamously loved-or-hated 2002 book about the Chicago swinging community, Slut Summer. And I've also thrown a series of group adult parties myself here in Chicago over the years as well, although admittedly not for awhile now, which have all been unusual in nature, and have attracted a series of nerdy and hot literate lovers, most of whom have seemed to enjoy them. And so when I found out that sexual activities are in fact quite prevalent within SL as well, plus that people there can actually make decent real-life (or RL) money simply hosting fun events there, I decided that I might just take a shot at it myself; to try to open my own sex club in the grid, that is, one offering a lot more than most of the current ones do, to the point that some people will eventually volunteer to pay an extra US$10 a month, to access its expanded "VIP" program. (And yes, I'm finally getting around to detailing the second half of the club's plan today; see below.)

But of course, this kind of stuff works in SL just like it does in RL; that is, you can't just go out and open a high-end club your first month in a new city, and expect people to immediately start forking over cash. Why would anyone pay $10 a month, after all, to belong to a private sex club, if there are no other people at the private sex club to actually hang out with? And who the fuck am I, really, to be charging people such an outrageous amount of money in the first place? Why should anyone pay that kind of money to someone who hasn't even proven that such a thing is worth it? Like I said, it's just like opening a high-end club in RL as well, one that depends mostly on word-of-mouth for its success; that you'll never attract people to the club until you already have a group of fun, sexy people already going to the club. And you'll never get that first core group until you've proven to them that they'll actually have fun at the club in the first place.

So that's what I'm in the process of doing, in fact, from now until January 2007 when my sex club is set to open; I'm building that first core set of sexy, smart customers, so that when the club is finally ready to open, there will be a great full crowd of people even the very first night. And the way I've decided to put this group together is fairly easy; I'm simply going to start holding events, every three weeks or so, each with a different theme, slowly picking up a group of regulars through the people I meet randomly, their friends, excited strangers who hear about it from a third party, etc. It's putting my money where my mouth is, basically, which really is the best way to start a new small business; simply go out and prove to people that you know what the fuck you're talking about, and they'll naturally start believing in your plans as well, trust me.

Now of course, let's not forget the whole point of my eventual club, which I've gone on at length about here before; to specifically attract the highly literate, over-educated, smarmy little slacker dirty talkers of the grid, people just like me. Oh, you know what I'm talking about -- the ones reading Nerve every day already, and Fleshbot, and Boing Boing for that matter, who worship such edgy erotica writers as Poppy Z. Brite and Dennis Cooper, who may have even done a little modeling themselves in the past, for Suicide Girls or I Shot Myself or Abby Winters or whoever. These are the people, I'm theorizing, who have the most to gain from what I'm trying to do with my own club; the other kinds of lovers here, after all, can have all the fun they want at the various free clubs that already exist. I'm working off the theory right now that it is these people who are most likely to spend ten bucks a month to belong to a sex club like mine, which is why I'm mainly targeting them while there.

So what I've done, then, is name my group "Serious Chat," just to give everyone a concrete idea from the get-go of what exact type of people the group is slanted towards. And basically what I'll be doing from now until January is simply producing a series of free events through the group, held at a semi-private skybox floating above an existing sex club there called Celestia. (I lucked out, as a matter of fact -- turns out that Matt and Parker, the owners of Celestia, are just as big of fans of this kind of stuff as I am, to the point of volunteering to host my events, and even volunteering to build the skybox, so that lag time would be lower than on ground level.) And then there's the key to the whole thing, is the promise I'm making to everyone right now -- that anyone who gets regularly involved with the free events at this point, will eventually receive a free lifetime VIP membership to my club when it opens. And this is literally worth US$100 a year (around 60 pounds, 80 euros), which is a fairly serious motivation for getting involved and staying involved. And the more people who get involved, the more who will start to have a fun time; who will start telling their fellow literate lovers and friends; who will start coming to events themselves; that will hopefully lead to this very sexy, very dedicated group of 30 or 40 core members by the time the club opens.

So, what kinds of events does a group like "Serious Chat" hold anyway? Well, three different kinds, basically...

--First there are events like last night, which I call "storytelling" ones; where the point is for everyone to talk about sex but not necessarily act like they're having sex. This is what makes such party games as "Truth or Dare" or "I Never" such hits in RL, after all, is that people have a chance to be sexual in front of a group of strangers, without going to the extreme of actually having sex in front of a group of strangers.

--Then there are the "roleplaying" events, which is pretty much the opposite; where the whole point is to chat as if you actually are having sex, just like is so popular among existing cyberers not only here but on IM services like AIM and Yahoo. Now, of course, this being me and this being SL, I'm going to be holding a whole series of interestingly themed roleplaying events instead of just general ones -- BDSM events, for example, gender-bending ones, ones just for various taboo fantasies (watersports, forced homoeroticism, etc).

--And then I'm also occasionally going to be throwing what I call "mesh" events, definitely not for everyone in the grid, specifically for people who enjoy mixing their real life into the whole thing a little. And like the other two types of events, mesh events will exist as a series of themes as well -- so maybe an evening, for example, where people must post a RL dirty photo of themselves in their profile in order to participate; or where instead of text chatting, everyone actually talks dirty together as a group via Skype conference call.

So like I said, my first one was this last Saturday, an event called "Extreme Truth or Dare;" just like the RL version, except with no question considered off-limits, and with questions directed towards in-game avatars and their desires, not the RL people playing them and their desires. Because these can actually be quite different, for those who don't know; that is, there are a whole lot of people here now who in RL are fairly quiet, fairly unassuming people (middle-aged suburban housewives, for example), but who in SL are these sexual monsters, into things like getting beaten up while being fucked, taking strangers by force, and other scenarios that would horrify them if actually tried in the real world. It's important, I think, to make this distinction clear at the beginning of such events; that when a person answers a question in a certain way, even if you know the RL identity behind that person, you should never assume that that's what that person would actually want to try in RL. And then, see, if you don't want to answer a particular question, you can always choose dare; at which point the darer gets to pick a random person from the group, who you must actually stand with in the middle of a circle and fuck for 60 seconds, talking dirty by yourself for the rest of the group to watch and jerk off to, on whatever twisted little perverted topic the darer wants to come up with.

And how did I find the people to invite to this first event? Oh, that's super easy -- I simply went out and fucked a bunch of strangers, a good 30 or 40 my first six weeks, then sent an invitation to the 20 or so I most enjoyed having sex with. (Like RL, this is the simplest way to get people to go to a group sexual event; simply prove that you're a good lover beforehand.) And here's something that was surprising, although not really; that out of the 20 or so people I invited, a good 13 of them actually said they'd attend, a much higher ratio than any of the RL events I've thrown over the years. I detailed this in Slut Summer, in fact; how no matter who you are, even if you're a good-looking single woman, you still have to deal with around 20 rejections for every one random swinger you end up having an actual good experience with. So yeah, whenever I want to throw an event with 10 people in RL, I end up having to invite over 200 people to find them; so it was quite nice, needless to say, to only have to do that kind of work with 20 people in the case of the grid, because of the lessened intensity of sex there and therefore the willingness of more people to engage in this stuff.

Now of course, that's not all there is to it; you still have to keep track of all these people, constantly send them reminders, constantly be asking them if they can give you a firm yes or no commitment yet, constantly reminding them that yes, they do have the email explaining what will be happening, okay, yes, I will send it to you again, but don't forget this time not to delete it. But then this was another fairly amazing thing that happened as well; that of the 13 people who gave first commitments, almost 10 of them actually ended up showing up over the course of the evening. Wow! Man, this is so different than how it works in RL; how even if you get 10 people to say yes, they will definitely and utterly be there, you can still only expect about half of them to actually show up. Which I was explaining to people there at the event on Saturday, those who seemed disappointed at first that only six people were there at the start; because I think a lot of beginning swingers simply don't understand just how much rejection is involved, of how six people actually showing up to a thing like that is something to be celebrated, not be disappointed by.

Because see, I knew what was going to happen; that not only was that small group going to end up really enjoying themselves, as often happens in unexpectedly intimate get-togethers, but that other people would be eventually joining us as the evening progressed. And this is partly because of circumstance, of course; that is, because of it being so easy to hop from place to place in the grid via teleport, which tends to keep people popping in and out of environments on a very quick basis. And then it was partly by design, too; that is, I purposely asked Matt and Parker to build the skybox without a roof, so that any stranger who came by could pop in and check things out too, with some of them undoubtedly becoming intrigued by that legitimately good group of initial players, and sticking around themselves.

Nonetheless, though, some people did get bored and ported out; and new people stopped by and got intrigued; and some people who were there before and went away came back; so that by the time an hour had passed, we had gone from 5 men and 1 woman, to 5 women and 3 men. And that was just good enough a mix to get started, which is what we did; and ooh man, talk about a good example of what being picky can get you. Because when you have the right group of people at something like that, things just turn very dirty and fun very quickly, like exactly what happened on Saturday; with everyone seeming to get the point of the whole thing, which is that it's okay to ask outrageously graphic questions of others in the grid, because ultimately we're all cartoon characters anyway, so why the fuck not? And so that quickly led to questions starting to get asked like, "What sexual fantasy of yours would most make your nonsexual friends go, 'Eww?'" and "What fantasy have you always wanted to try, that you still haven't gotten up the courage to talk about with a partner?"

And again, just like my RL events, I managed to pull off something that makes a lot of people amazed; to bring together straight men, straight women, gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, all in one group event, with everyone still managing to have fun and get off by the end of the evening. And I don't know, I'm not sure how I manage to pull that off; just keeping the events smart, I guess, and of a theme where people of different orientations can still manage to get each other turned on. And in the case of this grid event, of course, this aspect of it was even more fun; because all the gay people there, of course, kept wanting to goad the straight people into admitting that they'd had homoerotic experiences in their past (which a lot of straight people have, frankly, even in SL, or maybe specifically because of SL). And so that led to a lot of funny questions on the subject over the course of the evening; and anytime someone would respond that they had never even had a fantasy about it, all the gay and bi people there would groan and laugh and yell, "Liar!" and goad them on to admit the truth; until the point where most would end up admitting (like one person actually did that night, for example), that well, in fact, he'd actually had this threeway once, where the other guy and he scooted in real close together, so that they were touching each other's bodies all the way up and down, while a woman wedged herself in between them and fucked them both at the same time. And how he hadn't mentioned it to either of the other people, but yeah, if you're going to keep fuckin' goading him like this, he did get turned on a certain amount, knowing that that other guy and he were laying there rubbing all up and down against each other, as this woman fucked them both at the same time.

Hot! Nasty! Funny! A lot of stuff that night, frankly, that would make people both laugh a lot out loud, and also admit that they were getting awfully turned on by it all. Which of course is what the best rounds of Truth Or Dare are always supposed to be about; a way for people to have fun and laugh a lot, while also legitimately getting aroused over what's being said. And then of course as payback, the straight people kept asking the gay people all kinds of outrageous questions as well; so that, for example, a lesbian who was attending the event, who apparently is a quiet and traditional lesbian in RL, admitted that she gets unbelievably turned on by going "cruising" in the grid for anonymous random partners, something she would never in a million years go do out in the real world. And then this of course got people throwing follow-up questions at her, which got her admitting all kinds of related interesting things: that yes, it is quite difficult to go cruising for random women versus men, even in the grid; that part of the problem is that there are simply a lot less women interested in that stuff; that partly it's because of all the RL men running around here as women, which she can always detect about halfway through the sex act, which frustrates her to no end.

Ugh! Nasty! I love it! Like I said, this was probably the most fun thing about it all; of all these strangers coming together, sharing these very quiet secrets, talking plainly about things that they don't usually even discuss with lovers. I ended up admitting, for example, that I love having sex in the grid as a woman nearly as much as a man; another person admitted that she loves giving up control in the grid, which is why she's a radical slave here, despite being both a dom and a Type-A personality in RL. But at the same time, it was all these fun and very well-spoken people as well, who knew how to inject both humor and seriousness into their stories, who followed up with related questions just long enough to get everyone really aroused, then relinquishing control to the next challenger. And hey, we even had