(Heck, at its new intersection. Photo credit: Scott Crawford)

• Heck moved to PORNO CONTINENT!
  Yes, I moved my beloved (by about 8 people) Second Life club to a fantastic parcel of land on Zindra, Second Life’s new adults-only continent. The build’s done. Formal grand opening soon. In the meantime, bring on the pr0n.

• Free Music Program Continues Next Week
  Yes, that’s kind of like non-news in a way, but I don’t have time to post something before the holiday weekend, so we’ll get to it sometime after Saturday. In the meantime, some stats:

  June MP3 Song Plays Or Downloads (my stats program doesn’t differentiate):

  june:

  Zenova: 280
  Sybil (Instrumental): 276
  Sybil (version): 250
  Sybil: 243
  Puppet: 227
  Wolftab: 217
  Tonight: 207
  Something In My Drink: 172
  Ecstacy: 151
  Untitled: 148
  Chord: 127
  New Song: 85

  total:

  Sybil: 419
  Sybil (Instrumental): 361
  Sybil (version): 315
  Ecstacy: 287
  Zenova: 280
  Puppet: 269
  Untitled: 225
  Wolftab: 217
  Tonight: 207
  Chord: 188
  Something In My Drink: 172
  New Song: 85

  So, the exposure appears to be reasonably solid so far, and feedback from people I’ve talked to has been solid as well. Donations are still quiet, but I’m cool with that. The button’s below if you’re feeling frisky. More stats next month, and another free song next week.

  
  

  
  
  
  

• I’ve been thinking about the movie “Trading Places” a lot today. Specifically, the scenes toward the end with the baggage clerks (Al Franken and Tom Davis) arguing over who gets to drive the luggage cart next (though the late Stephen Stucker comes to mind in their scenes, too). Then, the words “Senator Al Franken” appear in my head, and for a moment, I become very proud of the world that I live in. Then I start laughing about the gorilla.

• I may be off the grid for a good portion of the rest of this week. Stay black, Happy Canada Day, and for those of you in Senator Al Franken’s home country, Happy Blowing Shit Up Day. Be safe out there, but not so safe that it keeps you from firing Roman Candles out of your butt. Just make sure you light the right end.

(Sita at my club in Second Life! Click the image to go straight to Heck!)

For those of you who have lived under a rock for a few months and haven’t heard me say it yet, I love “Sita Sings The Blues”, a new animated film by Nina Paley, not just because the movie itself is brilliant, but also because, as you’ll read here (warning: there be some spoilers), Nina went through HELL trying to get this movie released. I have the utmost respect and empathy for anyone who stands up to the “intellectual property” machine the way she has and continues to. Indirectly, Nina’s the one who finally got me off my ass to start releasing my music for free, and she’s awesome.

So, to serve the dual purpose of entertaining my guests there, and giving a little more attention to Nina for her efforts, today, I set things up so people can watch “Sita” at Heck, my club in Second Life (as you can see in the screenshot above). I told Nina about it, and she was pretty jazzed, so she wrote about it on her blog! (Thanks again, Nina!) And now, the circle is complete.

One more time, though, folks…whether you watch it at Heck or out here in that “other” life, you should totally check out “Sita Sings The Blues”. Best movie I’ve seen this year, and I’ve seen some good ones.

The 2007 Heck Street Fair is Saturday, August 18th! Our inaugural outdoor event will be 8 full hours of the weirdness that is Heck, neatly packaged into four mini-events showcasing our most popular activities.

Part I of our programming day is called “Skate…Or…Dive!” and it features the sporting side of Heck. We recently had a popular event called “LIVE NUDE ROLLER DISCO!” at Heck (which will be a regular event here for now on), and because it was so much fun, we’re encouraging everyone to put their skates back on (or get a pair of Skoopfs from us!) and go nuts on our property. Do tricks, dance, explore the Heck compound, take your clothes off and skate nude, you name it! This part is purely an exhibition, but it’ll be fun!

We’ll also be having a skydiving contest, using Terra Aeronautics products (Pro Chutes are *required* to enter; get yours at Abbotts Aerodrome or check with us closer to the event). This contest will have a L$500 prize.

It’s all happening from Noon-2 PM SLT, and it’s just the start!

Part 2 of our event, “ZOMG SHOPPING” is devoted to all the wonderful vendors we have in the Heck Mall, including Absentia, Feelgood and Sunshine Kind, The Gamer Grid, Happycat Industries, Sin, Unexpected Error, Fugly Jewels and @Dusk, who generously bought naming rights to this event for their other store. ;)

Throughout the day, Heck vendors will be making appearances at their stores (times TBA; check with your favorite vendor or us for up-to-the-minute info), but this is an opportunity to devote quality time to checking out their wares without having the sky divers, video games or naked people distract you too much! Worry not though, adventure lovers! There will still be dancing throughout this event with Heck’s resident DJ, Lexa Pro and The Ladies Of Heck!

Part III of our event, the Arcade Olympics, tests your skill at 5 of Seven Shikami’s popular OpenArcade games! The person with the best combined high score ranking on Freestylers: Groove, Fist Of Discomfort, Phrase Invaders, Zombie Meltdown and Whack-A-Mole will walk away with L$1000! You will be awarded 5 points for each first place finish, 4 for each second and so forth down to 1 point for fifth. Ties will result in a sudden death showdown! All participants must play all 5 games to be eligible (and you’ve only got 2 hours to get ranked, so play fast and don’t get too hung up on any one game), and the games are L$1 per play! While you play, Lexa Pro DJs and The Ladies Of Heck keep you company!

To finish off the event in style, Part IV, “The Nightcap” is your last chance to shake it for us, and have us shake it back at you! Lexa Pro, already doing a marathon for this unprecedented outdoor event at Heck, gives you his best 2 hours at the back end, and The Ladies Of Heck will be there, so show them what you’re made of while you watch the last sunset of the event and dance into the night! Anything goes at this one, kids!

Go here. That should bring you up to date.

I’ll talk more about that…other…life when I’m damn good and ready. =)

“Fuck time.”
-Topher Delcon, in Heck earlier

Just a reminder that my Second Life nightclub, Heck, opens tonight, Friday, December 15th 2006 at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Second Life Time. I’m still scrambling around last minute, of course, but it’s lookin’ good so far. This SLurl will get you to Heck if you have SL installed, and if not, the coordinates are Tamarack 94, 78, 159 (look on the Map), or search for “Heck” (because Search in SL does work right now, anyway).

If you’re still not sure what the hell I’m talking about with this Second Life business or if you missed it, read this.

People of Cartoonland,

On this coming Tuesday, December 19th, I will be playing at Club Midway in New York City. Some of the old farts in the audience like me will remember it as Save The Robots, the place where all the ravers would spend their late-night/early morning K-hole time in the late 80’s and early 90’s, though it’s switched owners a few times since then, and it has recently been snazzied up and turned into Club Midway! I hear good things about the sound system, and because the neighborhood is so gentrified now, the corner crack dealer who used to work on 2nd and B and once even gave my friends a free glass dick with their order has been replaced by a shiny new Starbucks, so fear not, suburbanites! (OK, I lied about the Starbucks.)

Anyway, I will be playing with Nanuchka, who are awesome and have graciously invited us to be a part of their month-long Tuesday night residency at Midway. We will be going on at 9 PM, (with Nanuchka on at 11) the show is 21+, and admission is a very reasonable $8.00. Also appearing will be Matthew Landis at 8 PM, and Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys at 10 PM. I haven’t checked either of those acts out yet, but I’m sure they’re just wonderful.

So, don’t make me beg. I hate begging. Come out and play on Tuesday, people! We haven’t played New York in a few months, and with me, you never know when I’m just going to stop playing shows and hide in my bedroom for a few years, so take your chances when you can get ‘em. If by some god-awful chance you haven’t actually heard my music yet, go here or here.

The show is just one of the things I have to tell you about today, though. I’ve asked before and gotten no response because you’re all a bunch of heathens. How many of you are using Second Life? If you’re not and you have a powerful enough computer to do so (hint: if your graphics card is anything other than an ATI or an Nvidia card, you don’t; sorry, not my rules…), you should really, REALLY be spending time with SL. Besides, I will be playing live shows in SL soon (more on that later, and yes, it can be done! My company, antimatteruniverse. will be opening Heck, an adult nightclub in Second Life, this Friday, 12/15, at 8 PM Eastern Time (or 5 PM Second Life Time, for those of you already operating on that clock). Heck has gotten great reviews from the people who have visited while I’ve been building it (and solid crowds, in a club that’s not even open…), so Friday’s opening should be insane. Come by, have sex on the ceiling, and do cocaine off of every flat surface in the place, just like we used to in the old days. “It’s all happening…” Heck can be found in Second Life at Tamarack 94, 78, 160 on the Map, or by searching for “Heck” in search, assuming it’s working. Or, assuming MySpace lets me use them and assuming you’ve got Second Life installed, use this SLurl to go straight to Heck.

And, finally today, I’d like to direct you to Pretty In Velvet. Pretty In Velvet is Kage Hopkins, known to some of you as my guitar player. While I’ve been dealing with all sorts of things in my life this year (pretty much everything but the completion of my album “Babykiller.”, which I assure you is still in very slow progress…), Kage has been writing and recording his own album. It is still a work in progress, but the basic tracks are written and we’re about to go into the mixing/overdub/putting a coat of gloss on it stage. So far, I hear shades of Human League, Fad Gadget and all sorts of other things dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I’m liking what I’m hearing quite a bit, I’m pretty sure that quite a few of you will as well, and I’m very proud of Mr. Hopkins for the work he’s done so far on bringing Pretty In Velvet to life. You can check them out at the above web site (that’s prettyinvelvet.com) or on MySpace (and be sure to add Pretty In Velvet if you like what you hear, because there’s more on the way), though I point out that, because MySpace’s streaming server has been really cranky lately, the easiest way to listen to music (which is what you really want to do here) is to go to the web site.

*huggles*
-S

www.antimatteruniverse.com

Through some cosmic accident, we hosted a Jimmy Kimmel/Jay-Z afterparty in Second Life tonight. Go figure. Read about that and more there.

If y’all have Second Life accounts, you have *got* to visit the Gay Yiffy Club (Silverstone 227, 85, 696).

I know, I know, but it is the absolute perfect combination of well done and fucked up. Best club in-world that I’ve found. Srsly.

So…

For those of you who have been wondering why I’ve been so quiet, both on my site(s) and in general this week, with apologies to Smoove B, “allow me to break it down for you”:

I activated a Second Life account on Sunday morning.

Go ahead, read about SL a bit, perhaps also reading the information at Wikipedia as well.

Done laughing yet? Cool.

Now, my thoughts on what I’ve experienced in the past 4 days. They can be summed up with another quote, this time from the immortal Lewis Skolnick:

“This is gonna be a great year.”

Yes, a massively multiplayer online environment (I strongly hesitate to call it a “game”) has its hooks into me but good, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. As I told qDot (who was talking about SL ages ago, relatively speaking, because he’s completely ahead of the curve on these things), this is probably been the most fun I’ve had on the Internet since I first logged onto IRC over 10 years ago. I’m not exaggerating here, people. You’re going to need a powerful computer to run it, and you may get frustrated with the learning curve initially (I picked things up right away, but I do that with a lot of software that people just plain don’t get), but the experience is worth the hassle. Mindblowing stuff.

Here’s a quick timeline of my first day in the SL world:

10/29/06. 3-ish AM: joined Second Life

10/29/06, 5-ish AM: I was already in the middle of my multi-partner sex scene, somehow managing to do this without a penis. Y’see, folks, you don’t come with genitals when you start the game. You have to buy them.

10/29/06, 6 AM: I watched my first in-world sunrise in an inner tube at a nude beach in Laguna with a girl from Brazil who was very sweet and had no problem with my lack of a penis. Some Kelly Clarkson ballad was playing in the background (every area of SL can accommodate streaming audio; DJs put on records in-world, and bands are starting to actually play shows, performing live as their SL avatars are animated). I felt like I was at a Junior High dance, only I had a penis at those.

10/29/06, 7 AM: Went back to the fetish club I’d been at earlier for the sex scene, and had what turned out to be a rather insubordinate submissive offer herself to me as a slave, at which point I finally got challenged for not having a penis. My response was an obvious one: “You only get to see my penis if you’re good.”

10/29/06, 7:15 AM: Bought first penis.

10/29/06, 8 AM: Saw first penis that was substantially bigger than mine. Got all of Laguna nude beach talking about it. When partner (technically the 4th I’d been intimate with already) and I went to have sex, the owner of the larger penis jumped in and started banging her before I could, in retaliation for my discussing his penis. Guy must not like publicity much if he responds to it with rape. He stopped eventually, and after a few minutes spent talking with my partner about how messed up it was that this happened, we decided to have sex anyway. (Yeah, I know.) First test of new penis, despite distractions, deemed a modest success.

Past those first few formative hours, it’s just gotten more and more interesting, culminating with the experience of dressing up in a Kool-Aid Man costume and having sex with Tinkerbell on a urine-soaked mattress in a jail cell.

Yes, you read that correctly. If you don’t believe your eyes, I’ll say it again.

I dressed up in a Kool-Aid Man costume and had sex with a girl who was dressed as Tinkerbell, on a urine soaked mattress in a jail cell.

The best part about that? She ended up IN THE PITCHER. OH YEAH.

I’ll give you all a moment to collect yourselves before I continue.

…

Better?

OK, neither am I, but we do have an article to finish. Don’t worry, that was the monster at the end of this book. The rest will seem tame by comparison. Maybe.

So in addition to Kool-Aid Man and Tink, here are some of the other highlights:

• A girl lured me somewhere for sex so she could attempt to blackmail me into giving her Lindens (the in-game currency, which can be exchanged for real money) to pay for the baby. Damn role-players. I explained to her calmly that while it was great that she wanted to keep the baby (or not; either option worked for me), the baby had no need for money (after all, I’ve been in-world for days and I haven’t eaten yet, you can get free clothing anywhere, and you don’t need shelter) and thus, neither did she. I probably made her cry, because people can take this stuff so seriously, but c’mon, a paternity suit in an online world? Jeez! Also: back here in the real world, I ain’t no deadbeat daddy so shut up, peanut gallery!
• Someone sold Rachel Haywire and I fake acid. In the SL world, people, in the SL world!
• Even when I wasn’t fuckin’, dancing in the Kool-Aid Man suit on Halloween was awesome, especially to “The Crablouse” by Lords Of Acid.
• Of course, it was also cumbersome (as big objects take a lot of rendering, and slow down the game), so I went back to my street clothes and tangoed from 4-8 AM at Club Arsheba, one of SL’s most popular clubs. Others I’ve been frequenting since I got there are Studio 54 and Club Industry, good people and usually decent music at both.

  I went to a wet t-shirt contest that had both female and male participants. My favorite of these was a guy with a mohawk and a spear who had a medium-sized cow attached to his crotch. He was doing laps around the dance floor at running speed, and had a message floating above his head saying “Ask Me About My Weiner”. Yes, readers, he was God. (Oh, and the wet t-shirt contest was alright, too.)

• I decided early on, when trying to figure out how to earn money in-world, that I would be a therapist, so I am. I’m apparently the first one (though if others want to claim that they were in the business before I was, I’ve no problem with that), and I am available in-world to discuss Second Life or real-life issues. I am not licensed, of course, so my advice is for entertainment purposes only. :D
• I own several vehicles, including a hoverbike shaped like a neon pink penis and, or course, a pogo stick. I love the pogo stick SO. FUCKING. MUCH.
• I also bought another penis which actually ejaculates, has retractable piercings, and can be made invisible, so you can spring it on people on a moment’s notice. My favorite use of this penis was when I was exploring one of the more unsavory areas of SL and I ran into a girl who wasn’t participating in any of the unsavory behavior, but didn’t appear to be idle either. Just standing around, watching the madness. So, not wanting her to feel left out, I walked up to her and came on her. This got her attention, and she started cursing at me. So, to make peace, I offered her a hug. Amazingly, she did accept. Then I came on her again.

• And finally, amid all the depravity which is what people are totally fixating on when they talk about SL, a bit of a reality check. I’ve had a lot of experiences that weren’t dirty, and were genuinely human and sweet. You see, you talk to people in chat during the time you’re in-world, and sometimes, you just walk around and explore with them. SL is this huge, constantly being added to world, and you can literally spend forever just walking around the place, seeing things, and trying things. Sometimes, you start talking to someone on there and you both decide to explore the place together. Most of the people I’ve run into on SL are very new to it, and they’re as blown away by what you’re both seeing as you are in nearly all cases, so it can definitely affect you, the combination of conversation with visuals and music. The experience you have at times like those (and here’s where the nerdbashers come out of the fucking woodwork) is not unlike that of a date, but the kind of date people have in movies. Seriously, I’ve had some very human, cool experiences exploring this universe with people that didn’t come within 100 miles of creepy nerdsex. Just some people hanging out doing cool shit in a different medium.

To sum up, I’m having one of the strangest, funniest, most disturbing yet amazing times of my life playing with SL, and if you have the means, I strongly recommend that you check it out. In the meantime, I’ll be talking a lot about Second Life in the coming days and months, and probably even posting pictures/video as soon as I get a chance.