I Don't Get Second Life

So I've read a couple articles lately about Second Life and I just don't get it. I think that's probably the first key there is that I read about it and don't do it;I'm not going to do it. Also, I've never been into the chat room phenomenon and I guess this was the logical step from there. I can understand that aspect. What I can't understand is that people spend real money to buy virtual real estate and clothes and just stuff, virtual stuff. In Second Life, one way people spend and make money is by buying land and constructing buildings and then selling the land. All the land is virtual, but the money is real. Businesses are making virtual presences in Second Life as well to catch the techies in their favorite environment. Even politicians are getting in there to pump up their following (sheep). How did this happen?

The other part of Second Life that I don't understand is that people have built churches and actually conduct religious services. One participant said that he didn't have much of a religious presence in the community in which he lived. He enjoyed gathering with others from his religion online. But here's the thing, in virtual reality, you don't know who people are at all. You don't know what they really look like, you can't read their body language to see if they are just fool of bullshit. To share in a so-called spiritual experience when the person sitting next to you in church as an old lady could be some dude that likes to go around and mess with people.

Such is the nature of virtual anything, so I guess that's what I can't get my head around. One of the authors of the articles I read tested out Second Life for his editor. The funny thing was that he got so wrapped up in the being online, that he lost his real-life girlfriend; but was still excited about some "girls" he had met in Second Life.

So they say that this will be the next big leap for the internet. Since real-life businesses are on board, that usually indicates that a lot of money will be pumped into something and it will be huge. But I'm not all about the social hookups and spending my money to buy virtual things and essentially living my life on the internet. I already probably spend too much money on things I don't need that actually exist and if I want to meet someone from across the world, maybe I should go to their country...I suppose I'll be one of those old goofs who will never catch on to that, what do you call it, interwebemail, those dang computers thing.

Peeps!!!

So I saw some Peeps in Target last week and I had to send them to my sister. Peeps just seem to occupy that strange spot in the space-time continuum of being both nostalgic and current all at the same time. What I hadn't seen before though are the little plush Peeps Bunnies. They remind me of the Bunnies in the Bunny Suicides, so I kept a couple here and sent the other two along with the regular Peeps to my sister.

OK, so I had moved on from all my Peeps fun until this morning when I was looking on Saveur to check on my subscription. There on the homepage of the website is an article on Easter treats with a picture of Peeps! So I read the article and then Googled Peeps. A lot of people do a lot of weird things with their Peeps. On this one website, this guys takes himself wayyyy too seriously with his Peeps art. He's protected the images so that you can't even copy them to your computer.

But one of the stangest is this website detailing surgical separation of Peeps. The concept doesn't seem so disconcerting to me, but the fact that it seemed to be done in an actual medical/dental office does. To think that the people doing this could also be the same people who need to drill into your teeth and stitch up your head is a little unnerving especially when you already fear doctors as much as I do!

I'm a Possession?

So I'm reading the newspaper the other day and come across an article titled, "Hinckley offers guidance: Church leader defends faith." I see that it's an article about the Mormon church, as Hinckley is the current president. So I thought it was possibly about some new Mormon scandal in which the church has to defend itself, which intrigues me greatly. But it was just about some biannual conference that they have where their top leaders speak. Within the first couple paragraphs, there is a quote from Hinckley stating, "Husbands, love and treasure your wives. They are you most precious possessions." Possessions??!!! I reread the sentence to make sure I hadn't skipped something. There it was: wives are possessions. What the hell? I knew the Mormons were wacky, but I didn't think that they actually would say something like that out loud. How can we condemn other countries and religions for the way they treat women when the one religion born in America still calls its wives possessions? And how can women allow themselves to be called possessions? The Mormon church vehemently disowns the fundamentalist polygamists, but where do they think those polygamist men got the idea to treat women as something to collect? Possessions, puh-lease?

No More Pussy

So I read this article in the Wall Street Journal, Triumph of the Fembots. First of all I must say that I was entirely surprised to find this article on the web and to find that WSJ posts its Opinion articles for free. The WSJ doesn't give anything away (try to click on one of the headlines; they're such a tease)! They have a few articles that they will allow you to read online for free each day, they aren't necessarily articles from the current issue, just free content. Also, the free stuff is a very small percentage of the paper. In order to get the full access to the website, you have to pay $80 per year.

OK, let me get onto the article. I loved it. Basically it makes a mockery out of the mocking of the Miss USA pageant by feminist groups. It's almost a historical legacy of which they can't let go. Apparently, NOW still urges women on an annual basis to stage "real woman" beauty pageants to make social and political statements. While shows such as the Victoria Secrets lingerie show exhibit much more titillating flesh, they are not held with as much disdain as beauty pageants. They should move on to the next generation of events and shows that pit woman against each other. No one can deny that the Pussycat Dolls show is humiliating and degrading to women (I've only watched 5 minutes of it, really, the commercials are bad enough). Even though the show is run by a woman and she thinks they are all empowered by using their own sexuality, how can shaking your barely covered ass for men be empowering? There is a big difference between taking control of your sexuality and using your sexuality to turn guys on in order to make money. If a woman wants to do it, that's fine because women should make their own choices in life; but don't call it empowering, call it what it is: prostitution.