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I spent a lot of time goofing around in Second Life today. Along the way I also managed to get a few other things done -- most notably, I suppose, I finally signed up for Midwest FurFest. I checked air fare rates with Southwest Airlines; they have round trips for $294.00. I should do that right away.

I went around in Second Life in my new snow leopard avatar. There was a "sexy furry" dance contest that I attended, where I came in second place, but this wasn't so difficult since only four of the people there had furry avies on, and one of them was the dance host who was excluded from the contest. Still, I won some money from that. Later I visited another club that I'd never been to, where there were quite a few furries. I have not yet actually visited Club Fur run by Furnation, but obviously that would be the place where you could expect to dance with the most furry avatars.

I liked my new avatar so much that I decided to get one for my other character (who has a panda avie already that I like, but not as much as the snow lepoard avie). These are made by Luskwood Creatures and Creations, who do a VERY good job on their furry avatars. There's also a place called Jakkal Designs that does great furry avies, they had a wolverine even. But I find the Luskwood avies most attractive. I looked very hard at a very cute skunk avie, but eventually I gravitated back to the large cat avies, and then I had to choose between leopard, panther, tiger, lion, etc. I went with a clouded cat avie which is very similar to the snow leopard actually. So, I was kinda boring in my choice.

Anyway here's Jalia as a clouded kitty:



One of the tricky things about these avatars is that you can have the tail up or down with just a simple command, /1 tail up or /1 tu, /1 tail down or /1 td. One of the options from your pull down menu is to display hidden or invisible objects, and when I did that I was somewhat surprised to realize that BOTH the up and down tails are there at all times -- the command just switches which one is visible and which is invisible. Very clever. ^_^

All My Favorite Bands Come From Finland...

While that statement isn't entirely true, an inordinant number of bands that I like do come from Finland.

First and foremost of course is one of my all-time favorite bands, Varttina. Then you have Hedningarna, another kick-ass folk-rock group which is part Swedish part Finnish. After that, there's Einsiferum, the folk metal group that I like so much, and also the goofy thrash/hardcore/polka band Finntroll and the Tolkien-inspired metal band Battlelore.

So last week I was on Amazon ordering the latest cd from Celtic folk-metal outfit Cruachan, and I clicked on one of those "if you like Cruachan you might like..." links, or maybe it was somebody's list of great folk-metal acts, I don't really remember. I usually check those things out because a lot of the music I like is hard to find, so I've come across a lot of it in that way. So someone reccomended this new band, and I clicked on the sound bite sample for the first song, and I hear a wailing fiddle and metal guitar riffs. Well, it doesn't take more than that to make me happy. ^_^ It sounded really good, so I went ahead and ordered it.

The band is Korpiklaani, from Finland. Their cd arrived yesterday and I've been listening to it since. These guys are really good -- not as heavy as Finntroll, somewhere in the neighborhood of Einsiferum or Battlelore but with a stronger folk influence I think. They really are like a Finnish Cruachan. Great stuff! Oh, and the new Cruachan disc is pretty good too. ^_^

Speaking of music... I'm visiting Club Fur in Furnation Prime, Second Life as I type this. Hmm, what to say, what to say. I've been annoyed by a lot of the clubs in Second Life that play non-stop rap and hip hop, especially some of the stuff they choose to play that is really beyond annoying. Mind you, the British club that I sometimes hit in the afternoon before work "Club Cherry Charming" can be just as annoying because they don't have a live DJ, they instead have some web radio stream that plays "hits from the 80's" and sometimes you get good stuff, sometimes you get nothing but Lionel Ritchie-type garbage. So a live DJ is usually preferrable, at least you can expect a DJ to usually play what the people want. The one club I go to, they've even played "Dare To Be Stupid" by Weird Al Yankovic when someone requested it... that's a good thing in my book. ^_^

So anyway... here I am at Club Fur, and I've found a new annoyance. No rap, no hip hop, no lame 80's music... instead this DJ plays nothing but techno electronic rave junk. Bleah. Plus the place is pretty dead, there are more people standing around outside in the nearby sandbox (a place where you can build stuff) than there are in the club itself... I don't know that I'm very impressed with the premier furry dance club in SL.