Teardrop featuring the Guerrilla Burlesque Dancers

My girls rock. Practicing for a Guerilla strike on Bowie Bravin's show (for my rezzday), we were captured by the eagle eye of Ormand Lionheart. This is his machinima.

Is it enough to have some love?
small enough to slip inside a book
small enough to cover with your hand
because everyone around you wants to look

it is enough to have some love?
small enough to slip inside the cracks
the pieces don’t fit together so good
with all the breaking and all the gluing back

and I am still not getting what I want
I want to touch the back of your right arm
I wish you could remind me who I was
because every day I’m a little further off

but you are, my love, the astronaut
flying in the face of science
I will gladly stay an afterthought
just bring back some nice reminders

and is it getting harder to pretend
that life goes on without you in the wake
and can you see the means without the end
in the random frantic action that we take

and is it getting easy not to care
despite the many rings around your name
it isn’t funny and it isn’t fair
you’ve traveled all this way and it’s the same

but you are, my love, the astronaut
flying in the face of science
I will gladly stay an afterthought
just bring back some nice reminders
and I would tell them anything to see you split the evening
but as you see I do not have an awful lot to tell
everybody’s sick for something that they can find fascinating
everyone but you and even you aren’t feeling well

but you are, my love, the astronaut
flying in the face of science
I will gladly stay an afterthought
just bring back some nice reminders

yes you are, my love, the astronaut
crashing in the name of science
just my luck they sent your upper half
it’s a very nice reminder
it’s a very nice reminder

and you may be acquainted with the night
but I have seen the darkness in the day
and you must know it is a terrifying sight
because you and I are living the same way

ugh

I feel so alone at the moment. None of the people I can usually reach out to are available. The things I normally fill my time with are on hold or gone. And things are changing ...

chain of events

tip, noun, verb
a small present of money given directly to someone for performing a service or menial task; gratuity: He gave the waiter a dollar as a tip.

Things you may not know about me: In my country, "tipping" is not a cultural norm. Here, we are paid wages for work, and rarely, a gratuity for a job well done. I have many years of RL work history in the hospitality industry and can count the instances of tipping on one hand.

No matter where you are from, however, it only takes a few days in SL to realise that "tipping" forms the basis of the economy. At almost every venue and many shops, you will be invited to tip the venue, the performer, and sometimes the staff working for the venue. In every venue I have been to, this "tipping" is, in fact, the only payment for any entertainment enjoyed by people using the venue. There are no cover or door charges, and very few membership or subscription fees.

Since I started working inSecond Life, I have worked for tips. To me, from my cultural perspective, this means, in order to be tipped for my work, I must do a "better than usual" job; as an entertainer and as the owner of an entertainment venue, I have struggled at times to ensure that my work was the best it could possibly be. I did what I could to make sure my work as a performer was diligent and committed. I made sure my venue was competently run and outfitted.

As a performer, I was aware I was not to everyone's taste. Knowing I was "light" on the standard themes and practices (grrr@emoting). I always assumed I would appeal to a "niche" market, and was comfortable with that.

But lately my niche has dropped away. Lately I have made consistently less in tips than the other performers. And it has occurred to me, as I watched my ability to provide for my virtual life dwindle, that perhaps times or tastes have changed. Often, at shows, the audience would be filled with friends of one or another dancer. My friends either couldn't attend, or were broke. And I was not reaching the audiences who were in attendance.

On Saturday night I made a clear 500L less than the other dancers. All of them. I am well aware of how and why it occurred, and there IS reason, but let's pretend that I am wrong, and I am just 500L less quality than other dancers. That's a significant difference. Particularly at a Factory show. The Factory is supposed to be the flagship venue of Virtual Burlesque. In my opinion, if a dancer is 500L worse than the rest of the team, she is below the required standard.

So I retired.

And as I considered retiring from burlesque, I remembered that I took up burlesque to pay some of Idle Rogue's expenses. And that my work has not, for some time, come close to meeting the weekly outgoings of running Idle Rogue. And that was when I realised that Idle Rogue had to stop too.

more to come ...

t3h boots

I am a boot girl. In both lives. The photo to the left is of my RL favourite boots. The happiest day of the year, for me, is the day it's finally cold enough to pull out t3h boots.

Boots are sexy in the feisty way (my favourite kind). They say "don't fuck with me". They are feminine, but they are never sissy. Even high-heeled boots make you feel like you could climb mountains or kick heads.

In Second Life, of course, boots are the easy option. No matching skin tones, no scary Linden feet, no cankles. And they still send that feisty, head-kickin' message ;-D

My first boot love in SL was for League's Sinaed boots. I wore them everywhere for months, until J bought me a pair of Stiletto Moody pumps. I finally took the League's off, though, when Bax Cohen (note the new slurl, if you didn't know) released the Prestige boot. They are divine, it is true. They are also on every well-shod boot-lovin' avi on the grid, as has been pointed out several times (thank you Marnix).

Slappy Doobie released her Blitz boots this week. You can buy them on xstreet by clicking here, and you should, because these are some mega-feisty sexy boots. They took me to At World's End and made me take off my clothes and play cello. It's true!

Seriously ... please visit At World's End. Take a treasured companion. It's a great place to try out your new boots :-)

Mislead

Knickers are my business. I am 90% certain, by the time I actually get down to my lingerie, no-one much cares what it is (and perhaps cannot even see it), but I care, and so my search for pretty knickers is unending.

So when I heard Akosha Eales had gone into lingerie, I hopped that tp before they were even hung on the walls at Phoenix Rising. I'm certain it would have annoyed the hell out of the team there, but I waited until it was all up, even knowing there was obviously a problem. I was late for work, too, because of it, but I loved them so much I had to wait for the red, which I wanted to buy for a friend (on a side note \o/ for designers who make transferable items, the shoppers love you. Cus when you've run out of excuses to buy for yourself, you can buy gifts!)

Lingerie - Mislead by Phoenix Rising
Jewellery - Memories by DECO
Hair - Cafe in Cinnamon by Analog Dog
Skin - Kate Medium Fuschia by League
Tattoo - Glorybox by Ellie Criss of Sharkey's Tattoos (custom)
Piercing - Custom by :smc:

By the way, my bed is by Lovers Playground. It cost a fuckton of lindens that I'm not really sure it's worth, but their customer service is excellent, and you can change the sheets, and those are both nice things.

chry TART

I have fallen a little bit in love with iheartsl and its' constantly busy spoonfuls of fashion, so, yesss, it's time for a few more fashion posts. One thing I have noticed is that the same items appear over and over again - I'm not sure if this is because contributors only blog the "latest" thing or the free thing, but I figure the three of you can stand it if I do this my own way.

Slappy Doobie mentioned TART to me just days before I found them at ZombiePopcorn carnival. I have since been to their mainstore and raided like a viking. TART is hot hot hot and I expect you'll be seeing a bit of it if you see a bit of me.


Dress - TART Alexandra (camo) by TART
Boots - Prestige by Bax (yes Marnix, I know)
Jewellery - Enigma by LouLou & Co
Hair - Kelly by Analog Dog
Skin - Kate Medium in Fuschia by League
Eyes - Emerald by Devious Minds
Tattoo - GloryBox by Ellie Criss of Sharkey's Tattoos (Custom)
piercing - custom by :smc:

sim: The Next Day