More Dancing, More Death

Last night started with dancing at the space station home of Willa, in orbit some 4000 m above the earth. Along with Mony, MTD, and Sardonicus, I strutted my funky stuff and engaged in some dances that were more reminiscent of the catwalk than a spacewalk. Still, once you're shaking your groove thing with a bunch of buddies, who cares if you're dancing like a female stripper, right?


Perversely, being in high places always gets me thinking of jumping. Call it a Death Wish, call is simple craziness, but Willa's space station was practically begging me to use it for another trip on the Suicide Express. And Sardonicus was happy to assist!

It turns out that Sardo has been working on a small, rideable spaceship that was currently still in beta test. For "beta test" read "could go in any direction at any time and explode into a million shiny sparks of hot fire." Sounded good to me. And hey, I'd never tried my hand at being a test pilot, so...

I flew to the top of the space station and rezzed the flyer. Yes, you can still breathe in space and no, you don't explode in the zero atmosphere. Shame really - another interesting suicide.

Right click. Fly.

In less time than it takes to hit the PAGE DOWN button, I was hurtling towards earth in a spiral of death. In truth, the "spiral" required me to use the arrow keys as controllers... but you get what I mean. I was able to watch the height figures tumble at the top of my screen, trying to work out just how long I had to live.

As I entered through the clouds I could see a shoreline: I was either going to hit ground or hit ocean. Splat or splash. Remember that in Real Life, flying is actually very easy - it's not hitting the ground that's tricky.

Seconds to go and the altimeter read 25 m. And I stopped! Some damned safety control had kicked in so that I could have a safe landing. But that's precisely what I didn't want! I wanted to end up as a smear of red and white across several square meters of sandbox. Tragically that dramatic demise was wrenched from my suicidal grasp.

Death, where is thy sting.

Dance...the Night Away

Hardly a Second Life day goes by without some dancing taking place. It's a phenomenon of note in SL that even the most nonathletic of us will happily get up and boogie until the wee small hours of one of SL's daily mornings. My friends and I hang out in Linden Land at the Balloon Tour in Ambleside, where the ironic thing is that there is neither a balloon nor a tour currently available. Even more ironic - or perhaps tragic - is the fact that the Newbie Introduction Pack handed out to the poor souls who join us in this self-chosen hell includes a LM to the non-balloon tour.

But on the upside, here are the two really fun things that you have there: A large platform that can fit lots of people, and an endless supply of fresh meat... sorry, new people... who are looking for things to do.


Enter one of SL's one-woman dance machines, Willa Wycliffe. Willa is kitted out to be the perfect hostess for a dance party at any time and in any. She (a) has a chimera she wears that folks can click on to dance, and (b) a web link in her profile that folks can click for music. Ergo, a dance machine!

Frequently I'm there with Willa and my other special friends, Merry Felwitch, mtd1952 Timeless, and Mony Markova, dancing our asses off until Willa falls asleep at the keyboard (Note to fans of abbreviations: FAAK = "falling asleep at the keyboard" or "fell asleep at the keyboard.")

Last night was no exception. Willa, Merry and I were joined by Jahmon Johin and Drumby Camel, along with the occasional passers-by. There's something about dancing and talking that makes Second Life special.

Folks of a literary bent might want to read - or re-read - Nikos Kazantsakis' Zorba the Greek to get a feel for the passion that can be behind dancing. For Zorba, the dance was a way of directing both his pain and his happiness; a physical catharsis of psychological tensions.

Maybe the same is true for some of us in Second Life.