“Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.” ~ Janis Joplin

I’ve gotten a few in-world comments from a couple people who tell me that they can’t bridge the disconnect between my “feminist rants” and my “squee! look how pretty!” posts. My virtual fashion lust, they feel, leads others to “take me less seriously” than they think I deserve. The general sentiment is “you should be doing so much more than wasting your time on all that fashion drama.”

Fashion drama? Kittens, I grew up on teh interwebs back when Mac vs PC flamewars were still defining troll and forum tropes. 4chan vs Scientology is drama. SL fashion is just bored housewives and college students being bratty. It’s not like they’re rioting in the stands over men in shorts kicking around a ball or anything.

I know, from the bottom of my heart, that these individuals are well-intentioned, and they are paying generous compliment to my writing, but seriously, if this is how you feel, just get the fuck out of the 50s already. I read any number of blogs where a guy will frequently weave in boy-squee rants about sports teams or the latest techno widget without blinking; I doubt anyone takes their other content less seriously or tells them to move on from iPhone drama.

So, once more for those in the cheap seats:
Virtual fashion and bouncing in girlish delight over pretty things does not remove anyone’s ability for critical thinking, their professional experience, or demean their sense of self. I am human; I have vanity; I embrace the deadly sin. But it alone does not define me. Or anyone.

Just in case you missed it — I’m a girl (BTW, spare me the mock-feminist outrage of “you’re not a girl, you’re a woman.” Girls are girls; boys are boys. Deal with it.). I grew up playing dress up and outfitting dolls, baking bad cupcakes in a box with a lightbulb, and applying cheap makeup onto a disembodied over-sized Barbie head. I also grew up enamored with Erector sets, Lincoln logs, and Legos, playing video games, watching my uncle rebuild his Shelby Cobra as if he were reassembling the Ark of the Covenant, listening to my Dad’s folk rock and my other uncle’s hard rock, and learning how to bait a hook properly.

The fact that I can rig ballyhoo or gaff a mahimahi in the right way so that it damages as little of the fillet as possible, doesn’t negate that I drool over vintage Chanel. The fact that that the words “Marino from the shotgun” can still give me shivers when I’m watching old games on the NFL channel doesn’t remove the reality that I also hum “I Love Being a Girl” while I’m shopping in SL. I don’t understand why those dots are so hard for some people to connect. And maybe it’s just a vocal minority giving me a skewed perspective. But given the amount of “oh those silly fashion girls” crap I read by people claiming to be taking virtual platforms seriously, I think this type of mindset really is as permeating as it seems.

Avatar customization and character immersion is a huge business model and is going to be for a long time. We’ve already got research that demonstrates the visual representations that people bond with can affect them physically and mentally. Tapping into human vanity is marketing 101 for men and women. Yes, many of “those silly fashion girls” are annoying. They’re also driving our virtual economy. And, I promise you they’re no more or less annoying than listening to some idiot try and outline why Lebron James or Brett Favre is the real anti-Christ. Squeeing over make-believe fashion gimcrack is no different from some blogger blathering about how his new iPhoneX.x is ZOMG! BEST! THING! EVER!

So, fair warning — I’m going to blog about pretty things that make me squee beside, around, and in-between all the other “serious stuff” you’ll find here. Given the amount of things that annoy me in SL, I need the squees. The squees are why I’m still in the format. So if that means you take me less seriously, or feel compelled to remove me from your twitter/blog feeds, have at thee. It’s a free world; you can opt-out and I will muster on with life.

All I ask is that you opt-out in silence and don’t moan about it in my IMs; it kills my vanity-drenched, girl-squee, drama-hopping shopping buzz.

“We were able to convince both Dylan’s management and Sony BMG that this was a perfect project for us. . . . We think (they’ve) done a terrific job of doing a total Bob Dylan promotion. It will be a win-win for everybody involved.” ~ Ken Lombard

Sony YouTube Fail

Okay. Let’s forget the fact that I paid for this song already. On vinyl. On cassette. On CD. Let’s forget the fact that it’s sitting on my living room shelves in two of those three forms and I’m sure the CD is somewhere in a box. Let’s forget that if I wanted to, I could go download it from any number of Chinese sites for free (oh, the blessed irony) without so much as a blip of protest.

IT WAS A BOOTLEG FROM SOMEONE’S PHONE DURING AN IMPROMPTU MOMENT THAT ONLY MATTERS TO FANS. It was shoddy audio, jerky and badly lit. Most people would likely have had a hard time realizing who it was or what song he was singing. Your chance of marketing this in a box set of anything was ten degrees less than nil.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is wrong with you people? How long are you relics going to keep alienating consumers? Get with the friggin’ program.

Whatever the equal is of the ten plagues of Egypt in corporate form, can we please get that started on these boneheads? Let mai Dylan bootleg GO!

(And, yes, you know I’m annoyed when I’m wishing frogs to rain down on people)

“But there is a reason why this country has checks and balances. And there is a reason why people can’t arbitrarily vote on the rights of others without having to defend this vote in the logical arena of courts…” ~ Alvin McEwen

Yesterday was a good day for a lot of people I care about and for the country I loved as a girl and desperately keep trying to love as an adult. The US is a difficult parent to keep faith in as I grow older. I imagine that most people who identify with patriotism the way I do feel disillusionment and frustration when they see injustice bullied into law. The patriotism I grew up understanding as child is not the rabid hate-fueled variety that infects newscasts today and centers itself on denying rights and aligning the government toward a church state. The patriotism I grew up with was corny and riddled with inaccuracy, but at its core was the belief that equality and justice will always win given a fair hearing. Perhaps clumsily, perhaps at the end of an ugly, frightening path. I maintain an exhausted hope that this holds true, that wrongs will right and that truth can always stand tall, even in the face of ten thousand screaming lies. It is a tired, relentless brand of patriotism that believes every voice must be listened to on equal ground in the public arena and then the arguements must be laid out and decided on merit and merit alone.

Scratch any cynic and you draw idealist blood.

As a girl I believed everything was possible — that all things could be repaired through the system. These days I see how the system is used against its citizens and itself and I wish I held the answers to fixing the problems, rerouting the redundancies, repairing the loopholes. Don’t get me wrong. If I were Queen for the day, I know what I would change in a snap. However, it’s not about my way, or anyone’s way. The promise of America is fairness in the end, not perfection of the moment. We fail and we fail a lot and we will continue to fail. The promise is the path — to aim for right, even when the trajectory has been crooked for a long, long time. You can’t buy back the past and you can’t pretend injustice didn’t happen, but you set out to see it doesn’t happen again. This we can do. This we must do.

When a bunch of old, flawed white men sat in a very hot room and yelled at one another until they had worked out a compromise on the means to govern themselves, the miracle of the act was not in trust, but in openly admitted suspicion. Of each other. Of any government. Of too much power being put into the hands of anyone or any group. In many ways the words “In God We Trust” should be followed by “Everyone Else is Suspect” to drive home the purpose of their sentiment. I am a firm believer in protecting me just as vigilantly from other Americans as I am from outside foes.

Because of my inherent and fundamentally American mistrust of my fellows, I had a sort of sick feeling in the middle of October that Proposition 8 would pass in California. I hoped against it — in part because of the people I care about who would be affected both directly and indirectly. I also hoped against it as an American who was once a little girl and an idealistic patriot. I hoped against it because there is a deep shame in the denial of human rights toward any individual for any reason and it’s a shame America has already been on the wrong side of. Repeatedly.

I still identify enough as an American to feel personally offended on some small level when injustice is put into law in my name. Because “we the people” includes me. I believed that as a child; I believe it now. So when someone is denied their rights, when someone is imposed upon, when someone is tortured in the name of my country, it offends me as much as it saddens me when someone dies in the name and protection of my rights and my country. Anyone who doesn’t see the links between those emotions doesn’t get the full scope of the social contract of advanced citizenship. You can’t have one and not the other. You can’t mouth about defending the US and protecting its citizens and then preach denial of rights or justification for committing atrocities out the other. Not while maintaining any semblance of intellectual honesty.

Near the end of October I sent the lyrics to a song I called “The Way You Fly” to Grace. She developed them into a song we now call simply “Fly.” I didn’t tell her what the song was about or what it meant to me; I never do. She worked her magic and somehow it just expressed, through her music and vocals, everything that was churning inside me when writing the lyrics. I felt a connection to it the first time she played it and I still feel tethered at the heart every time she plays it. It speaks to me in patience and anger and hope. I’m not sure how it speaks to Grace or anyone else, but that’s the compromise of handing off your work for public consumption — everyone gets their own piece of it in one way or another.

On its basic level the words are a simple promise from one patient lover to a passionate, frightened partner. A statement of endurance and commitment, despite injustice. I was writing on that level when I first tapped out the start of the lyrics. It was personal. I’ve never been told in my life whom I might be allowed to love. The idea that someone — anyone — would dare tell someone else who they are allowed to love, marry, spend a lifetime with — it offends me down to the bottom of my little girl idealist American soul. How could it not?

As I’ve returned to the words, I’ve found what they mean to me doesn’t stop on that personal level, however; they are not merely a conversation between two people anymore in my perception. Rather, the expression has turned into a promise from the soul of truth to the soul of love denied. A promise that temporary concepts cannot change eternal outcomes. Without intending it at all, I wrote something that actually reflects what the promise of America means to me.

Love and truth will win. In the end they have to, because they are the only things we touch in the meat of our animal brains that really matter. Strip away the labels and the distractions and the fear and you have only the unflinching truth — sometimes patient, sometimes cruel, sometimes comforting, sometimes tormenting. Truth is undeniable and it will only be delayed for so long. But we also know that truth without love is joyless. They need each other. We, as a race of strange monkeys, often forget that in the middle of all the things we create to distract our minds from fears over our own mortality. Passion without purpose or love, even in the name of truth, is missing a fundamental half of the human equation just as much as mindless emotion without truth to guide it can lead to dangerous waters.

In the balance, where love and truth align, we win. And that is why yesterday was a good day.

And every time we think we’re falling, we must remember how to fly.

Scratch any cynic…

“There is a powerful tension in our relationship to technology. We are excited by egalitarianism and anonymity, but we constantly fight for our identity.” ~ David Owens

This is a rambling train-of-thought post. Proofreading it was a nightmare; I can’t imagine why you’d want to read it, but if you do, know that persons attempting to find a plot within it will be shot.

It’s strange to me that the Blizzard / Battle.net controversy only hit stride yesterday. I got my first “Real ID” email on the 13th of last month and knew there was darkness on the horizon. True, it didn’t contain the official forums tidbit, and was worded in such a way to highlight how everything is (at this point) optional. So maybe that explains why the enormity of the consequences didn’t set in until now. Or maybe privacy is already so on the ropes that it takes a fortnight for people to connect dots these days.

From a purely cynical point of view, it’s brilliantly timed. Those users who might be pissed and cancel in protest are likely to be lured back soon after by Cataclysm (…or StarCraft, or Diablo III…).

The official line and a lot of the conversation seems to believe the Battle.net requirement is merely a smirking corporate tactic they’re hoping will silence a lot of negativity on the public forums (which, in theory, will reduce the energy that is expended on moderation). Blizzard’s own babble backs this.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

Most of these assumptions are demonstrably untrue, and ignore the troubling implications.

* Forum administrators will be vulnerable and serve at a disadvantage while their real-life information becomes fodder all over the internet.
* Vile people will be just as vile under their own names as they will under a handle. Talk shows, Reality TV and Girls Gone Wild videos are the majority rule and those people don’t wear Guy Fawkes masks to act like morons or say disgusting things. Social and criminal deterrents only work when there are consequences that deter people from their own natures.
* It’s easier to impose stricter rules and employ technology solutions than it is to police a user base. Trying to impose a false sense of positive by bulling away negative criticism is ultimately self-defeating.
* Devaluing your own forums and driving people to third party formats in search of free speech makes you a second-class delivery system in your own market. When people stop visiting the official forums, Blizzard will have to work harder to monitor third-party forum sites to find out what their customers are saying/thinking and will have to spend more on promotion efforts to get their messages out. This is bad juju.
* Blizzard actively recruits and markets to children; the first time a kid’s real name gets used for something sinister, it’s crying moms and abused children vs. Big Bad Blizzard’s greedy corporate policy. Throw in an ambitious lawyer and you’ll end up with a class-action lawsuit just for putting kids at risk.
* God help them if they try and make this retroactive, or there’s a tech glitch and information from past posts are revealed without user consent.

Blizzard is usually nothing if not self-serving and hyper-protective of their legal liabilities. So why the dumb move? What’s the advantage? Do they think being able to provide users with the ability to network inside their own system is more important than focusing on gameplay/immersion, developing the relationships between users and their avatars, or updating content faster? It looks like it. They’re misreading their role as that of a communication provider, instead of being an entertainment provider with outlets to communication-based venues.

With the launch of the new Battle.net, it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment — one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID — including these forum changes — have been made with this goal in mind.

You can almost see some out of touch suit sitting around spouting things like “we gotta be more like that Facebooky stuff — why aren’t we doing Facebook things? Farmville is killing us!” while his R&D department head tries not to commit seppuku in the middle of the boardroom.

It looks like they’re trying for the Disney World model, where once you show up, you never have to leave for anything. Except that sort of thing only works at Disney World because WDW provides for every guest need. Food, clothing, transportation, emergency services, entertainment, etc, are all catered to. It’s stupid to attempt this sort of this thing when you only offer one product (entertainment/activity) and that product is, let’s face it, waning. Improving the flow of communication between users and their social networking is certainly crucial. Trying to establish themselves as a closed-circuit hub (and doing so while imposing constraints) is unfathomably dumb.

I could support (and would defend) Battle.net trying to hook up their users with outside social networking as a means to keep people inside the format, and requiring authentication for such. That’s basic, but it doesn’t require the public brandishing of user information. If I’m Jane Smith on Facebook and Jane Strangelove on Twitter and KillzYouHard on WOW, my voluntary desire to link those accounts doesn’t require my IDs being splashed all over the forums just because I hate the fact that Blizzard techs can’t ever meet their announced deadlines, or because my fishing hat lure doesn’t work after the latest patch.

Being able to monitor and interact with my social networking should be a positive thing, not a sacrificial endeavor. Blizzard could easily allow authentication and interaction without stomping all over user privacy. So why don’t they value user privacy, or believe that users value it enough to make it worth the trouble?

Well, that’s a longer post and requires a bit of personal disclosure to understand where my beliefs on the subject come from. I’ll bump it behind a jump so you can leave it here if you’d like. (more…)

Always gets a replay
Never tilts at all
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball
~ Pete Townshend’s “Pinball Wizard”

(The Who begins to play at the Superbowl halftime show)

Mother: Okay, which ones are these guys again?
Me: The Who.
Mother: And what do they play?
Me: Well, this song is Baba O’Riley, although most people think it’s called teenage wasteland.
Mother: What do they play that I would know?

(brief pause)

Me: You know this one. It’s the theme song for CSI New York. Who songs are used for all the CSI theme songs.
Mother: Even my favorite?
Me: Sadly, yes.
Mother: They do all of them?
Me: Yes.
Mother: Wow, I wonder how they got them to do all three?
Me: The songs were hits before they were used for the shows, Mom.
Mother: They were? When?
Me: 70′s.
Mother: They weren’t written for the shows?
Me: No.

(A few songs play – including an excerpt from “See Me, Feel Me”)

Me: Oh! You might have seen Tommy. That was all songs by The Who.
Mother: What was that?
Me: A musical with Ann-Margaret.
Mother: Like Bye Bye Birdie?
Me: No, Mom, it was called Tommy.
Mother: And who was in it?
Me: Ann-Margaret, Tina Turner, Jack Nicholson, the guys from The Who…
Mother: Ann-Margaret and Jack Nicholson?
Me: Yes.
Mother: And it was a musical?
Me: Yes.
Mother: When was it?
Me: Mid ’70s.
Mother: Really? Wow. I don’t remember it.
Me: You were too busy dragging me to Barry Manilow concerts against my will.
Mother: It wasn’t against your will, you loved them.
Me: You have no proof of that. I maintain I was forced.
Mother: You still know all the lyrics.
Me: Yes, that’s why I couldn’t learn math – there were Barry Manilow lyrics taking up room in my head. I hope you’re happy you kept me from being a math genius.
Mother: Your Dad made you listen to Bob Dylan and his songs are way longer.
Me: Don’t try to confuse the issue with your fuzzy logic. You’re why I don’t know math.

(Half-time show ends)

Mother: That wasn’t so bad. I really do like musicals. I wonder why I didn’t see that one.
Me: It had good music in it?
Mother: Ha. Ha. Who else was in it?
Me: Elton John.
Mother: Is that the one where he’s in the really big shoes?
Me: Yes!
Mother: Oh, I did see that, then.
Me: I am so impressed.
Mother: I think your Dad took me to see that at the old Tropicaire drive-in.
Me: You remember where you saw it, but all you remember about the movie is Elton John in big shoes?
Mother: We weren’t really watching the movie.
Me: What were you…oh jeez, TOO MUCH information!!
Mother: Come to think of it that might have been when your brother was…
Me: Waaaaaaaaaaay too much information! Way! Too! Much!