Jennifer She Said

May 2, 2013 by 1 Comment

An interesting message arrived in the SLS inbox last week, from one Jennifer Gretson:

Hi,

My name is Jennifer, and I’m reaching out because I noticed that your blog https://secondlifeshrink.com/ isn’t updated very often. Without an active blog, it’s really difficult to get website traffic.

That’s why I wanted to reach out to you; I’m a freelance writer trying to build a name for myself online, and I’d be happy help contribute to your blog if you’d like. You don’t need to pay me or anything, either… I just want to get my name out there as a great writer.

I’ll be happy to provide some samples of my work if you’d like; just let me know!

Of course, paranoid cynic that I am, I’m assuming that this is some sort of scam, and that if I reply “Jennifer” will try to persuade me to give her my credit card details by promising vast income from Google ads, or whatever magical internet paradigm is the get-rich-quick scheme du jour. Perhaps she wants access to my WordPress account so she can use it for spamming, or link-farming, or hosting dubious content, or some other nefarious purpose that will bring the FBI to my door.

Or perhaps Ms Gretson is sincere, and she really believes that publishing work in our little blog will help her become the next E. L. James. If so, it seems cruel to puncture her charming optimism by exposing her to the disappointing reality of our obscurity.

Anyway, Jennifer has one thing right; five posts in four months is hardly what one expects of an active blog. I’ll have to try to raise my work rate a little – as usual I’ve got lots of ideas, and surely I can’t go wrong if I put it in writing…

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Ha Ha Thatcher is dead

April 8, 2013 by Leave a comment

I know that dancing on the graves of the newly deceased isn’t very classy, but I’d be lying if I told you that my reaction to hearing today’s news was anything other than a broad smile.

I’m actually a little dismayed by this – not due to any respect I had for the woman, but rather because I’m sure she would have seen the fact that her demise is being celebrated by the likes of me as a badge of honour. My brain wants to rate this event as a footnote in history, to condemn her to the obscurity she deserves, but my heart is saying otherwise.

Oh well, I guess the cool rationalism will win out over the next few days, but tonight we party…

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International Women’s Day 2013

March 8, 2013 by Leave a comment

When Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin proposed the observance of an International Women’s Day back in 1910, I wonder if they imagined that over a century later their sisters would still be campaigning against gender-based violence and in defence of reproductive rights. In some ways it’s depressing that so much remains to be done, but the history of struggle over the years is never less than inspiring.

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Viva la Revolución Bolivariana!

March 6, 2013 by Leave a comment

I woke to sad news today; Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, had lost his final battle against illness. It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating his reelection; now we mourn his passing.

Hugo Chavez will undoubtedly be remembered as a great figure in left politics; his legacy not just the vast improvement in living standards he brought to the people of Venezuela, but also the movement he built that will carry on his work, and the inspiration he gave to others fighting poverty and injustice in neighbouring countries and around the world.

That inspiration is captured in the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which covers the abortive 2002 coup against Chavez, and the popular uprising that defeated it. It’s available in full on YouTube, and well worth watching.

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There is no land beyond the Volga

February 2, 2013 by Leave a comment

Today is the 70th anniversary of the final surrender of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, the last act in the most significant battle of the Second World War. It marked the end of the Nazi dream of eastward expansion, and the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive which would end two years later with the Red flag flying over the Reichstag in the ruins of Berlin.

Whatever one thinks of the wartime Soviet regime (and even a committed communist like myself has some serious reservations about Uncle Joe) it’s impossible to read the story of the struggle for the city without being inspired by the remarkable courage and tenacity of the troops who fought and died to turn the tide of fascism on the Eastern Front. Units like the young women of the 1077th AA Regiment, who stood against the advancing Panzers to the last shot, or Rodimtsev’s 13th Guards Rifle Division, 10,000 strong at the start of the campaign, of whom barely 300 lived to see the German surrender. The battle made heroes of Vasily Zaytsev and Yakov Pavlov, among many more of the thousands of soldiers who crossed the burning Volga to defend the last Soviet enclaves on the west bank of the river, knowing that their life expectancy could be measured in hours. Their sacrifice stalled the Nazis while Soviet forces built up on the German flanks, ultimately springing the pincer movement that trapped and destroyed the once-mighty 6th Army.

The resolve of the Soviet troops was undoubtedly bolstered by harsh discipline – Stalin himself commented that it took a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army – but it’s clear from contemporary accounts that the soldiers on the front line were well motivated to fight the invaders, partly by ideology, but mostly by a desire to protect their homeland.

Although with hindsight the Soviet victory at Stalingrad seems as if it was inevitable, given their ability to replace losses in a way that the overstretched Germans never could, at the time it must have been much less certain. The decisive factor may have been that communism, even in the distorted form of Stalinism, is essentially rational – coldly and brutally rational at times, but always more effective than the half-baked mysticism of Nazi ideology. Hitler may have believed that Aryan destiny and fighting spirit could substitute for food, ammunition and winter uniforms, but Stalin knew that the war would be won by the side which could bring the most force to bear on the enemy, and at Stalingrad the Soviet armies proved that with ruthless efficiency.

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The Griefing Games

January 13, 2013 by Leave a comment

Internet addicts in China have a mixed time; while government-run centres provide some of the most up-to-date treatment in the world, patients who check into the wrong clinic might find themselves getting electroshock therapy, or being beaten to death.

In a new twist, it was reported this week that a Mr Feng, exasperated by his son spending hours online in preference to getting a job, had hired assassins to kill his slacker offspring. OK, these were virtual hitmen, who repeatedly offed the boy as he tried to play World of Warcraft, but still, that’s tough love. (If you believe the story; there is some scepticism.)

I doubt that this approach would work with Second Life addiction (if one accepts that such a thing exists), since anyone who puts up with the frustration of SL long enough to develop a problem is unlikely to be deterred by a bit of low-level griefing. In fact I’m not sure that having a couple of hired killers tracking me, like I was in some sort of exciting spy story or something, wouldn’t make me more likely to log on, though I guess it might get a little irritating after a while.

There might be a business opportunity here – for a fee operatives could stalk a resident around the grid, befriending them and winning their trust, before unexpectedly delivering a virtual whacking, a bit like the CRS Corporation did to Michael Douglas in The Game.

I think there could be quite a bit of demand for such a service, playing as it does on the paranoia and narcissism that are such prominent features of the Second Life experience. On the other hand, the revenue model might be undercut somewhat by the fact that there are plenty people in SL who are willing to provide unsolicited harassment free of charge.

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2012: The Year in Review – Part 2: Blogging

December 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

2012 saw a landmark in the history of Second Life Shrink, as we celebrated our fifth anniversary back in May. Despite that it has been far from a vintage year, and our post rate and traffic have been well down, partly due to the myriad distractions of life, but mainly because, I must admit, I have rather lost interest in the whole concept of virtual worlds.

I don’t seem to be alone in my ennui; many of the Second Life blogs that were active when we started up are now defunct, and even the mighty Alphaville Herald is but a shadow of its former self. Hamlet Au, to his credit, keeps plugging away at New World Notes (even if he showed terrible judgement by leaving us off his list of influential SL blogs), and there is still a constant froth of SL fashion blogs, but the days when Second Life promised a new intellectual frontier seem to long gone.

Anyway, here are our top ten posts by traffic over the last 12 months:

  1. Second Life demographics – a brief review
  2. Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
  3. On Second Life and addiction
  4. The Social Network
  5. Guess I’ll go eat worms
  6. All Stars
  7. Zombie epidemiology
  8. What’s up
  9. Virtual alchemy
  10. Plunging Necklines

All but two of these are pre-2012, reflecting our low output this year. Of the posts we did manage, these are my personal picks:

WordPress introduced a new statistical feature this year allowing us to trace where our readers live; here are the top ten countries:

  1. United States
  2. United Kingdom
  3. Canada
  4. Germany
  5. Australia
  6. India
  7. Brazil
  8. Netherlands
  9. New Zealand
  10. Italy

Unsurprisingly we’re most popular in the English-speaking world, but we have had visitors from 103 countries, on every continent except Antarctica. The most notable exception is China, where I can only assume we are censored as a threat to state security.

So what of 2013? Will we have a creative renaissance, and delight the world with our incisive commentary on culture and the metaverse? Or will we coast along, content to bask in the fading glow of our past glories? Watch this space…

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2012: The Year in Review – Part 1: Culture

December 30, 2012 by Leave a comment

Back in February I had the brilliant idea of starting up a Tumblr, upon which I intended to note every record I bought, every film I watched for the first time and every new book I read, so that come December I would have the raw material for a review of my year’s cultural highlights.

I have managed to keep this going (unlike the Pinterest project, but that’s another story), and it has revealed, disappointingly, that the cultural landscape of my life is more akin to an arid desert than the tropical rainforest I imagined it to be.

I did best on the recorded music front, with 24 albums purchased, a fraction of what I consumed back in the 90s, but perhaps not too bad for an old dog. Books read numbered an embarrassing 11, none of them published this year, while my movie intake was a mere dozen, with only two actual trips to the cinema (and one of those was to see The Muppets). I seem to have managed to completely avoid going to concerts and exhibitions.

Have I descended then into philistinism? Has the pernicious effect of the accursed internet completely rotted my brain? Not quite yet I hope. I spend rather more time than I should on idle web browsing, but I do try to keep up with the Arts sections of the papers, so I can join in conversations about contemporary culture, even if most of my opinions are gleaned from reviews rather than direct experience. I still listen to music pretty much all the time, though I stick more to stuff I know I’ll like than I used to. I do need to start watching more films again, starting with the stack of DVDs I accumulated this year that I never quite got round to viewing.

Anyway, on with the review. Music first; here’s my 2012 mix-tape, made up from my favourite track from each of the records I bought this year, mostly new releases, but some older stuff too:

Chocolate Boy – Guided By Voices (Let’s Go Eat the Factory)
Norgaard – The Vaccines (What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?)
On a Neck, On a Spit – Grizzly Bear (Yellow House)
Wasted Days – Cloud Nothings (Attack on Memory)
Boyfriend – Best Coast (Crazy For You)
Secrets – Headlights (Wildlife)
Love Interruption – Jack White (Blunderbuss)
Can We Really Party Today? – Jonathan Wilson (Gentle Spirit)
Better Girl – Best Coast (The Only Place)
Be Impeccable – Guided By Voices (Class Clown Spots a UFO)
No Cars Go – Arcade Fire (Arcade Fire)
Neighborhood 3 (Power Out) – Arcade Fire (Funeral)
Yet Again – Grizzly Bear (Shields)
June – Unrest (Imperial f.f.r.r.)
Harnessed in Slums – Archers of Loaf (Vee Vee)
Polyester Bride – Liz Phair (Whitechocolatespaceegg)
Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know – Dinosaur Jr. (I Bet on Sky)
Season in Hell – Dum Dum Girls (End of Daze)
Pinhole Cameras – …And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Dead (Lost Songs)
He Gets Me High – Dum Dum Girls (He Gets Me High)
Waking Up The Stars – Guided By Voices (The Bears For Lunch)
Keep Believing – Bob Mould (Silver Age)
The House That Heaven Built – Japandroids (Celebration Rock)
The Anarchist – Rush (Clockwork Angels)

There are several contenders for my record of the year, including Attack on Memory, Silver Age, Celebration Rock and both the Dum Dum Girls’ EPs, but I’ll give the nod to the pleasingly complex Shields by Grizzly Bear.

The best book I read this year was The Cambridge Modern History Volume IV – The Thirty Years War, a majestic tome published back in 1906, available on the Kindle for pennies, which covers not just the titular conflict but also the English Civil War and religious, philosophical and cultural developments of the period. The editors’ Victorian prejudices do show to some extent, but the raw material is so dramatic that it can’t miss being a gripping read.

My fiction reading this year mostly consisted of catching up with books I’m faintly embarrassed to admit I hadn’t read already, like The Trial, The Gambler, Crash, and, my favourite, The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing. I liked it for its depiction of life in the CPGB in the 50s, which is a little specialised I guess, but it’s also worth reading for the experimental structure and proto-feminist sensibility.

Film of the year? I hardly feel qualified to comment, but I thought On the Road was quite good. The Muppets was OK too I suppose.

So, that sums up my year of culture. Not my best ever, but not too shabby. Hopefully I’ll be inspired to try a bit harder in 2013…

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The Lay of the Last Avatar

December 24, 2012 by 4 Comments

So the world didn’t end last week after all, which is a good outcome, I guess, not least because it means that the $80 I spent last month on renewing my Second Life premium membership for another year hasn’t been completely wasted.

It has been almost completely wasted though, since I don’t currently possess a computer capable of running the viewer, and I have no plans to purchase one in the immediate future, which will obviously limit my enjoyment of the service a bit (unless the Lindens get their act together and release some sort of mobile client). I did hesitate a little before handing over the cash, but in the end my sentimental attachment to my virtual land was strong enough to convince me that the relatively modest investment was worthwhile.

Sir Walter Scott, in his narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel, wrote:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

There are a few places I have stayed in the real world that have seemed like home, for a while, but that feeling invariably faded, as time moved on and people and places changed. I have occasionally tried to recapture it, but without success – you can revisit a physical location, but you can never really go back, because the person you used to be exists only in your fading memory.

So I find it comforting to think that there is some corner of a virtual field that will be forever the same, a home for my eternally youthful avatar. I can only hope that there are enough other people who feel the same to keep Linden Lab in business…

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End of Daze

December 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

I’ve not had much time, nor inclination, for blogging in the last month, for one reason or another, but I thought I had better get myself together to post a final word or two ahead of the end of the world on Friday.

Of course the rational side of my brain is aware of the cosmic narcissism implicit in believing that the Universe turns according to an arbitrary schedule pulled out of the air by a long-dead member of our insignificant species, but my more fanciful side can’t help hoping that the promised UFOs will show up, bearing benevolent aliens who will issue us with personal rocket-ships and immortality pills.

Failing that I guess I might be able to shake off my torpor long enough to compile our usual year-end review. We’ve been pretty quiet over the last twelve months (and we already did a five-year retrospective back in May), so it shouldn’t take too long…

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