Just out of curiosity I looked into one of SL's competitors, a VR world called "There". While not as cool as SL, and seeming to be much more oriented to the "teen" set, I decided to give it a go anyway. Since I'm on vacation and have all this time and all. Also the system reqs seemed to allow for Newton's inadequacies, such as they are. So I downloaded it and got on with the free membership thingy. Which meant I walked around in some sucky girl clothes last night and most of today, until I fixed it.

Anyway, several intellectually intriguing thoughts.

One. The sucky girl clothes? In "There", as in SL, you pay real money to get game money, but the exchange rate rocks. 1,800 TBux to the dollar. So I blew $25 on it and was able to get myself camo shirt and capri pants and black hiking boots and a purple flat top haircut. So I feel much better now. Now that I'm not in the tight red short-shorts and the tight orange top and the yellow beach slippers. The camo is also tight. But I feel much better now. Make of it as you will.

Why does wearing butch clothes on my VIRTUAL avatar make me feel so much better IN REAL LIFE?

Two. When I signed up last night I found myself in possession of a hoverboard. I don't know how I got it, more than likely you get something like that automatically when you sign up, but I had it. I soon discovered mile upon mile upon mile of deserted beaches, mountains, and most intriguing of all deserts. Monolithic, Tattooine-like deserts. I have found that what I enjoy most of all is just ripping through these empty wastelands on the hoverboard. No people. I rarely if ever see anyone out there at all. There are structures out there, but outside of a few places nobody seems to be going out in the middle of nowhere. So I spend almost all my time on the hoverboard, climbing these gigantic mountains and diving down the other sides. So much so that when I somehow lost the hoverboard I started with I went and bought another one. I prefer going anywhere I can on the hoverboard. For some reason it is terribly soothing to just go out in the middle of viritual nowhere and rip around mountainsides. Go figure.

There's a place with giant mushrooms too that I kind of like, if only for the surrealism value. I also found a place in the middle of nowhere with three hot tubs. Oy. But the wholee tiki thing kind of gets to me. But to balance that out they've got an entire Egypt section in the desert, complete with big pharaoh statues.

Well, I've totally blown the day away playing on the game. It's nice to be able to blow a whole day that way, even if it isn't all that great for me health-wise.