Sex, Love, Art and Slavery

Rheta and Codie at Bloggers Ball and Slave Auction

Oh, what a weekend! Where to start? Okay...

Rheta Shan contributes land to start new Visual Arts Center
About a month ago, Rheta Shan, winner of Dusan Writer's UI Design Contest, posted an offer to donate her mainland plots for charitable or artistic use. Since I had been romancing the idea of creating an open source stage set area for those creating comics, machinima or other image-capture projects in Second Life, I emailed her right away. After a bit of email correspondence, we finally had a nice GTalk chat and she was kind enough to offer the land for my project. I'll post more on the project over the next couple of weeks, but for now I just want to send Rheta a big thank you.

Artist's Way group begins
On Sunday morning, I attended the first weekly meeting of Sophrosyne's The Artists's Way group. We'll be supporting each other as we go through the exercises in the book and work to enhance our creative life within Second Life.

I break my bank on slave purchase
I had no plans to buy or be sold when I arrived at the Second Life Bloggers Ball and Slave Auction later that afternoon. By the time I left, Zoe had purchased me as a slave, and I was the proud owner (for 24 cumulative hours) of the Number One Couple in Second Life: Codie and Gabby!

I first met Codie while I was still an obscure newbie in Second Life. I believe I had a question about her MachinimaCam and sent an IM out of the blue. We got to chatting and before you knew it we were talking about video, polyamoury and the joys and perils of virtual relationships. Over the months we chatted here and there and crossed paths quite a few times, including the recent mass migration from Twitter to Plurk. Over the months, I've come to realize that Codie is one of the authentic Lights within Second Life and models loving, emotionally-close and red-hot relationships for the rest of us, along with her extended family including main girl Gabby.

I don't know Gabby very well, outside of following her Plurks and keeping an eye on her blog. But our brief conversations have always been lovely and I'm REALLY looking forward to getting to know her better.

So what plans have I for my 24 hours of total power???? And what does Zoe have up her gun-toting sleeve for poor innocent Botgirl? Stay tuned.

Nubie Botgirl, Soap Opera Search String and The Tao of Zoe

My planned post on identity has taken a great turn: Sophrosyne was kind enough to pose for a few snapshots and I'm working on a comic-style graphic on the virtual/atomic world connection. I hope to have it ready for Monday. Till then, here are a few pre-weekend tidbits.

Earliest Botgirl image:

I'm in the process of transforming this blog into a RL book version that I plan to offer via Lulu.com. It will be a chronological Director's Cut with commentary throughout. So I've been combing my far flung data storage looking for extra goodies and came across this early self-portrait. Cute, huh?

Most evocative google search referral:

http://www.google.com/search?h...husband won%27t let me play sl

When people visit the blog from clicking a link on a google search page the query shows up on my blog activity report. The query above is from yesterday's edition. It certainly suggests a few interesting stories, doesn't it? Here are the top ten Google queries for the last month.

1.	botgirl
2.	botgirl comics
3.	botgirl questi
4.	botgirl limerence
5.	avatars gone wild
6.	second life relationships
7.	botgirl blog
8.	second life alt
9.	second life diary
10.	"second life" churn

The Tao of Zoe:

I imagined standing in RL as Zoe does in SL. Looking at things through her eyes instead of my own. From a comment by Zoe Connolly

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is meant by the transformation of things. Zhuangzi