Sarcasm

Merely a quick note to mention that I will be appearing at the Aether Salon in New Babbage a week on Sunday, alongside the considerably more interesting and productive Ms Hyasynth Tiramisu, speaking on the subject of "Whimsy".

A link providing more specific information.

I am sure that I will be blithering in the same way that I usually do, but despite my presence I am confident that the Aether Salon will be as illuminating as always and full of the best and brightest gems of society.

It is my Rezday today, and given that, I decided to make myself a Present of 512 Square Metres of land. (Tier for which I will not be paying due to my Premium Status - a term which always makes me feel like some sort of ham. Premium Ordinal Meat, L$100 per pound!)

In any case: I have bought a small plot at Raindown (137,57). My intention there is to make an actual Adult Library; things which actual adults might be interested in, as opposed to the ridiculous fantasies of adolescents pretending to be older than they are, or older folk pretending to be younger than they are.

I would welcome suggestions as to the sort of Adult Content which might be included here. Mortgages? The obtaining of a Pension? How to deal with a particularly persistent Paramour whom one half-desires and is likely to be weak towards, yet whose actions are clearly harmful? (Cease all communication no matter of what sort!) And so on.

Citizens of the Grid! We have heard you clamouring outside the palace gates, unquietened even by the regular rezzing of Cake, and, truly and honestly, read and inwardly digested every message that reached us tied around a rock and launched through a window.

We appreciate that our initial plans to raise the price of all sims to $1000 per minute might have caused some alarm, and we have no intention of stifling the boundless creativity of our subjects. However, it must be said that many of you have been excessively naughty, and used things which are clearly outside of the stated use of Second Life (dancing, selling hair, looking at prim fish). For instance, many of you have been using megaprims - we have been shocked to discover this - and also such scripting techniques as WarpPos.

Our keen ears have detected that you wish to have a greater variety of potential options for your sim hosting.

1. Those of you who used the sims as originally intended - chatting, copybotting, selling Siggy's waterslide - want that product at the original price point and demand clear and strict discipline regarding usage, or perhaps just clear and strict discipline in general.

2. Some of you have built businesses on your sims, set your rental rates or built your groups and although you acknowledge - or at least you damned well will, once you have met the Green And Purple Waterboard - you built more than we say was intended but did nothing to prevent, a large and rapid price change is too much for you to absorb.

3. Some of you built creations that were between a huge empty hole in the ground and a floating elephant farm and want some kind of "proper region lite" product - a lower price point than a normal region but with the ability to build a certain amount of content.

I am sure that we all welcome the latest Clarifying Announcement by the Laboratory reassuring residents that they are ready to ban pretty much anything at a moment's notice, which will make us all much safer from whatever it was we were in danger f

A tip of the hat to the respected journalist Mr Hamlet Au, who has had considerably more success than I in eliciting a response from Channel Four Radio, whom I believe I mentioned earlier. I must say that Mr Au's full piece is well worth reading, highlighting as it does the regrettable tendency of our men and women of business to slip into a most peculiar automatic argot when confronted with a question for which they appear to lack understanding, answers or interest.

It really is quite amazing what one can see in Second Life these days. This is a period of unprecedented innovation by all sorts of commercial entities, to whom we should be eternally thankful.