Madelaine McMasters

Pamela Galli wrote: And yet today I capitulated and started putting snow on rooftops. :-( It does snow somewhere in November, right? Like Montana? New England is still digging out from under last week's huge snowstorm, Pamela. You are not too early!

Keli, for years now, I haven't done my decorating until Dec 26, when I can go to the garden stoe and purchase a fully decorated fake table tree for $10. A week later, I donate it to the Community Center. There's nothing for me to store in the attic, nothing for me to put together or take apart and I get a new style every year. For $3 I can get enough candy to make me sick to my stomach for days. I do the same for all the holidays, picking up the sweet deals on the leftovers the day after. I hope to carry this tradition of being a day late right through to my funeral.

Treasure Ballinger wrote: Replying to my own post, heh. Also meant to say that I'm not anti child av. I have child av friends that I deeply respect, and I understand why they do want they do. It's not my SL thing but I don't fault them. They stick to the TOS just like I do, to each his own as long as you play by the rules. If they are out there breaking TOS then like anyone else, I'd say that should be dealt with but not just because they chose a child av. If my experience is any indicator, adult avis acting childishly vastly outnumber child avis. Marianne McCann is a wonderful embodiment of childhood revisited. I'd welcome that bespectacled li'l rascalette anytime, anywhere.

Cinnamon Mistwood wrote: special ones I made just for Maddy were first rolled in motor oil and then fresh clean kitty litter (to give them the proper crunch.) Cinn, thank you so much! After my encounter with a certain wild cat this week, this is just the ticket!

valerie Inshan wrote: Hi Cinn, hi everybody! I just saw a note from CiaoBella saying that Lillie's dad has had complications and is back to ER. Let's keep him, Lillie and her family in our thoughts and prayers... :smileysad: Lillie, we love you. Hang on hun. Yes Val, we're all hoping for the best. Lillie's father is in need of every good thought we can send his way.

Venus Petrov wrote: The hawt secky photos are buried in another G-rated thread. Yes, it seems a natural reaction for cats to bury my snapshots.

While sharing a nightcap with Ms. Nightfire, I was apprised of her situation. I concur with the general sentiment that the unseen right hand of LL doesn't seem to know what the heavy left hand is doing. I hope the decision is reconsidered. Until then, be thankful that the glare of the stunning Celestiall is not directed at us... or at least you. I assured her that root-beer does wash out and that black does not stain easily. She remained, as always, skeptical. Damned intellectuals.

Dresden Ceriano wrote: Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: I am really impressed with what you have done. Your advice can really be useful to almost any resident. A tiny suggestion though - possibly you could find someone to post your items for you. It adds an air of detachment and mystery that's so popular in these times. Me too, though I would further the suggestion, by suggesting you add some substantive links to some suggestive stuff then post something subjective on Facebook suggesting this thread. ..Dres I thank you both for your kind comments, but must confess that I have an aversion to anything substantive and a downright loathing for anything Facebook. My interests are carnal, not social. Given a choice between Mark Zuckerberg and Torley Linden, can there be any doubt where I'd wiggle my tails?

Charolotte Caxton wrote: your bulk shipment of ladybug food? It's in. My feet thank you, C.

Venus Petrov wrote: White is so....neutral...and...ahem....innocent. I do not think you can claim innocence now, can you...dearie? I can, and will, claim anything I please, thank you very much! ;-)

Sy Beck wrote: Madame, may I commend you not only upon your exquisite prose, but your undeniable chic. Madelaine McMasters peut etre est un nom de plume mais vous etes "la nom de la plume maintenant"***. I have dispatched my butler to escort you to my private Lear and fly you to my tropical hideaway. I have fully customisable intelligence and character sliders with a French insouciance slider plugin slider too for good measure. I await you at the dinner table. Yours faithfully, Mon Sy Beck (La France meilleur chef de la volaille) ***Apolgies to all French speakers for murdering your language Why thank you Sy, you are too kind. I hope the Lear has wide doors, all this attention has gone to my head. /me swoons over your murderous ways.

Dillon Levenque wrote: "Are you a hairball?". Hairball? Ms. Levenque, I'll have you know that after my li'l tete-a-tete with Ms. Furse, she collected enough tail hair to knit an entire cougar cub.

Ellyn Elan wrote: I enjoyed your parody. It was a parody, right? omg /me looks worried /me thinks, "What if it wasn't a paradoy???" :::awkward!::: /me wiggles a tail or two at you.

Read Madelaine McMaster's previous post here. Where did you get the inspiration for your look? The inspiration for my ghostly visage was, to be honest, carnal desire. I'd been kicking around SL, looking for the right combination of looks, intelligence and character to attract a hottie. Finding no tab for either intelligence or character in "Edit Appearance", I focused my effort on looks. My first experiments were crude, consisting entirely of dragging sliders to the stops in the direction I deemed most likely to get an "ooooooooh". Feedback, much of it in all caps and punctuation marks, helped me achieve a look which eventually allowed me to roam in public without being griefed, but did not actually help me achieve my goal. What do you do to relieve “creativity block”? Steal. This past Halloween, through careful research in the forums, I was made aware that both costumes and tails were considered sexually attractive. Fearing someone else would take those ideas before I could, I clicked over to the marketplace and bought every ghost costume and tail in stock, thereby locking out all potential competitors. How long did it take you to build your look? I've been told many times, by many people, over many years, that quality work takes time. I don't know why they persist. I find that the less I attend to detail, the more I can get done. I think my work speaks for itself. From start to finish it took less than eleven minutes, eight of them spent waiting for delivery from the marketplace. What is the biggest misconception about attracting hotties in Second Life? I don't believe there are any misconceptions. If there's a need for them, I'll get right on it. What is your advice to Residents who wish to get involved in attracting hotties? Knowledge is power, and for that reason, I only give advice in private. Are you busy this evening?

CaramelBombshell wrote: Yea I know they have the say so, I just thought I'd make that statement for the reader to read. I dont want people thinking Im a damn racist or something lol I love everybody. Caramel, I didn't sense any discomfort in this thread, nor did I think your OP was racist. You aren't the only one curious about these things. Welcome to the forum ;-) EDT: Although Ellyn did mention "discomfort" with her understanding of your OP, she found the resulting conversation interesting, as do I.

Deltango Vale wrote: Well, anything in a yellow, opaque, glass D-cup is probably a bad idea. Me, I prefer things in oyster-grey, satin B-cups. Are you a half-full or half-empty kinda gal, Del?

Treasure Ballinger wrote: Hiya Madeline, LTNS indeed. I am hoping your post isn't true, for the most part; I'd hate to see us thinking something like, 'I can't be white in RL but I can in SL'. That's a self esteem issue that I hope we're past. I really don't think it's all that deep. Statistics show. (yes I can pony them up if you make me) that whites are numero uno on the welfare rolls, followed by blacks and hispanics. USA stats, can't speak for other places, could be different in other countries. Simple internet search will show you. I think we have just as much ability to acquire a computer as anyone else. Mostly, it's a mindset. My daughter went to college at Xavier, in New Orleans, a black, Catholic college. Having been around mostly blacks all her life, that is her comfort zone, and she continued with that in college. She went to law school at George Washington. Whole new world out there, and for awhile, she was very uncomfortable, as she learned to live, and deal with, people other than blacks. Background makes a huge difference in one's preferences. I can hang out with anybody. I am educated and eloquent. I can also speak ebonics along with anyone else, and what I call 'corner talk'. It's a choice, not a necessity. It's a comfort zone thing, a letting down of your hair, it feels like, 'whew, I'm home'. In the business world, you won't see that in me. It's saved for special social times when I"m with my like-minded. I think really, that is all this OP meant. Treasure, I share your hope that it's not true! But Caramel isn't the first to observe a dearth of black avis here. As I said, I don't know if that's true, or just appears so. I think I captured your explanation in one of mine, that people will seek comfy venues and then just pop between them. I too would hate to see us thinking "I can't be white in RL but I can in SL", but a good many of us are already thinking "I can't be pretty in RL, but I can in SL" and "I can't (easily) change my gender in RL, but I can in SL". That said, I think switching ethnicities/cultures here is harder than switching gender or physique. While whites may outnumber blacks on the welfare rolls, broadband penetration is higher in white/hispanic families, as I mentioned. Money may not be the only factor in determining whether people come here. It would not surprise me to see that the RL demographics of SL users were not representative of RL at large.

Treasure Ballinger wrote: *Laughs* Being black myself in both RL and SL, I knew exactly what you meant. You want your comfort zone, your peeps. LTNS, Treasure! Yep "You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the glrl" works in SL too. ;-)

This is an excellent question Caramel and one I've pondered myself. I can think of several possible explanations for the dearth of black avis in your SL experience. I won't pretend to understand the importance, if any, of a particular explanation, nor do I know if this dearth is real or perceived. First, as SL allows us to design ourselves, we see both more AND less diversity here. We have furries and tinies, vampires, robots, fairies, all manner of imaginary creatures. Yet we also have very few elderly, overweight or "ugly" avatars. Sadly, might we have disproportionally fewer black avis here because RL blacks choose to present as another skin color? I hope this is not the case, but I don't know. I do know that I've heard many queries for good ethnic skins, suggesting that there is an unmet need for them. SL affords much greater latitude in selection of living space than RL. You can live in the city, the country, the sky or under a barge in a canal somewhere, all for a cost which pales in comparison to the cost of the computer and internet connection you must have to enter SL in the first place. This eliminates RL income as a major factor in determining where you live in SL, so geographical segregation, and therefore concentration, may be less prevalent. The ability of venues to target exceptionally narrow ranges of interest, and our ability to travel between them unseen (via TP, rather than walking down the street) may mean that we get far less intermingling than in RL. Once you've found a few popular black hangouts, will you discover many more connections to places with disproportionaly higher black attendance? Getting back to income, blacks still trail whites and hispanics in broadband adoption, but that gap is now small and closing fast. I hope this means we'll see more black avatars going forward, but this might explain their possible disproportionate under-representation so far. SL still needs a reasonably powerful computer, which may be out of reach for many people. Is it also possible that education and/or culture preselect? While I hope SL is a place that promotes tolerance and understanding, it also allows people to escape discrimination by conforming in ways that RL prevents. Perhaps SL, rather than being a reflection of RL, is a projection of it?

DQ Darwin wrote: hugs Wildcat, all better now, lol I'm glad your eyes cleared up, Dee. Though all that blinking you did yesterday did help fan me... and goodness gracious, I needed it! Hi, Kids!!!

DQ Darwin wrote: Wait a minute.......where is the fire pit? I got the..heck we all got the fire pit? Nobody escapes, Dee.

Sorry I'm late! Wildcat kept me up late last night. While drooling over Kylie in her catwoman costume in the Halloween thread, I spied this comment from Wildcat... "@ Kylie => if you would get a tail ..... I would date you ":matte-motes-inlove:" It's not often one is given such insight, so I got right to work... And golly did it work!!! It wasn't long before I heard a li'l scratch at the door. I nearly fell over myself running to answer... and there she was. Wildcat!!!!! I invited her in and regaled her with my famous small talk. She couldn't take her eyes off me... She couldn't keep her paws off me... It was a magical evening... Happy Thursday Everybody!!! (winks at Wildcat) /me pads away, singing "Everybody, everybody, everybody wants to be a Cat.... ooooohhh, yeahhhhhhhh"

QuoteCharolotte Caxton wrote: Why does it (ed: The International Date Line) go around Kiribati like that? I'm so glad you asked this question, Ms. Caxton. I have a great interest in date lines and would be happy to explain. The International Date Line was first laid on the water (yes, it's actually a dotted line floating on the surface) by the small but hearty crew of the French corsair "Ventre Frottez" in 1852. Captain Jacque "Buckwheat" Zydeco was infamous for his inability to resist the advances of wayward women. The famous phrase "A girl in every port" was tattooed on his mast. The expedition started in the Antarctic Ocean and proceeded north, tracking as straight a line as possible without bumping into things. After skirting New Zealand (who's inhabitants previously wore trousers), the crew resumed their northward course until being squeezed between the Tongans and the Samoans, an experience describe as "pleasant" by all involved. Just out of Samoa, Captain Zydeco unfolded his charts and realized he was within schmoozing distance of Kiribati, a Micronesian island rumored to be inhabited by the disinhibited. He ordered the crew to come hard to starboard. Widely misinterpreted, that command cost the expedition nearly a day's time, which they thankfully recovered with the blessing of favorable tradewinds. The rumors of Kiribati were both true and understated. Seeing the approaching visitors on the horizon, natives gleefully lined up on the beach, wearing naught but smiles and carrying hollowed coconut halves filled with a fermented elixir whose name roughly translates to "Milk of Amnesia" . The welcoming procession was unlike anything the crew had encountered before, or would encounter again. After three days of merriment, the natives relieved the crew of most their wealth and all of their memory. The bewildered men set sail, tracing the meandering path you see in the map above. It took the crew several days to regain their heads and their bearings. They set sail due north, tracing straight and true until nearing Midway island and the hope of a repeat welcome. Alas, it was not to be. Captain Zydeco, his intellect fogged by the welcome at Kiribati, misread his charts, mistaking Midway for Oahu. The crew's hopes of getting lei'd by Hawaiians with succulent pineapples were dashed on the seagull pooped rocks of Spit Island. The dejected crew sailed on north into the Aleutian island chain where the ancestors of Sarah Palin attempted to harpoon them from their back yards. There is much more to tell about the construction of date lines, but suffice it to say that dating is a messy business and you should not be surprised by twists and kinks along the way. Yours in curiosity, M.

Sy Beck wrote: [ETA] Think of it this way. There is no need to adjust your clock while travelling. If you were in an airplane you are not constantly winding your watch forward or back as you travel; there is no need. It is only necessary once you land. As an engineer who's natural bent is to want precision, I avoid these concerns by carrying my family heirloom pocketwatch. It stopped ticking in 1952, saving three generations of McMasters from the worries of punctuality.

Perrie Juran wrote: So what happens to an astronaut if he is in a Geo-synchronis orbit? Three things... 1) He ages a li'l faster than us because he's feeling less gravitational time dilation than we are (which is not completely offset by his greater velocity time dilation). 2) He gets bored with same people waving at him all the time and longs for the change of scenery an asynchronous orbit brings. 3) He brushes up on his Russian because they're the only ones who can get him back at the moment.