M0lly's Musings

M0lly's First, Last, and Only Words on the RUNWAY Debacle.

Those of you who know me well - and there are not many of you, I am extremely private - would know, that I do not get involved in SL drama, and I do not post randomly or without being aware of the facts. I do not bad-mouth anyone (unless they have an ARC of over 5000 at the Hair Fair)  and I do not get involved in public comment and dramas until I am confident that I know what I'm talking about. I am not a public person and I am not interested in anyone's opinion of my morals or motivations.

 

I was not planning on making any comment at all on the RUNWAY debacle. This too shall pass, I thought, and sad, and messy, and ugly as it has been, it will be over. We will move on, and the talent and creativity of those at RUNWAY will be put to other uses and will live on in other ways.

 

However, the latest Final Post by Maggie was really too much for me. Enough is enough, and it is time to put This Issue To Bed.

 

A Final Post is just that. So Maggie, please stop. No more. Leave. Enjoy your RL. Get well. And stop posting. It's over.

 

The comments relating to Thalia's failure to pass on information, and willy-nilly handing Runway over to BOSL are factually incorrect and must be refuted.  I cannot begin to understand why Maggie would email Thalia and post on the blog at the same time, knowing that Thalia is, like myself, in Australia. This means that by the time Thalia even SAW the email and the blog - she does have to sleep, like the rest of us -  the IMs, fingerpointing, hysteria and general SL drama was well underway. 

 

However, these I know to be facts:

 

The minute Thalia saw the email, she cut and pasted it into a notecard inworld, and sent it to everyone that needed to be involved. There was NO withholding of information.

 

That Thalia, EmmZ and Vera met with Frolic, and that the prime motivator was the assumption - be it incorrect or otherwise - that there were unpaid staff, advertisers out of pocket, and a magazine that was the pride and joy of many.

 

Their desire to see these obligations met is only to their credit and should not now, or ever, be used as a weapon against them. It speaks volumes that these women decided to try to do the right thing in a mess not of their making. All power to you. Not everyone would behave as well as you tried to do. My respect, ladies.

 

This sorry train-wreck needs to come to the end of its line right now.

 

Everything that happened here is because of Maggie's misreading of the situation.

 

The lack of communication with those who believed in her was unacceptable, and after the amount of time we have all spent in SL, laughable. There is always a drama when something like this happens, this is NOT a surprise result, and as many, many people have said, had there been a real desire to pass RUNWAY on, meetings with trusted associates should have taken place prior to the announcement and a seamless transition could have been effected.  Even the sale of the business would have been acceptable. This was poorly handled and the fallout has been people hurt and confused by the events that transpired.

 

I know, with every fibre of my being - both SL and RL beings, I might add - that EmmZ, Thalia, and Vera especially, acted as they thought best in an horrific, sudden, and overwhelming situation, with IMs and notecards flying and information, good, bad, and ridiculous, pouring in on all sides. It is a deluge, and exhausting when it occurs.

 

All of these women are known to me personally in RL and I respect and like each one.

 

So - time to stop. Thalia, EmmZ, Vera, and everyone else associated with RUNWAY, behaved as best they could given the information they had at the time and whether their decisions were right, wrong, or indifferent, were forced upon them by the actions of Maggie and Ocean.

 

And the rest - can we please say - is now history.

 

From me, there will be no further comment. Except to say - I loved my time at RUNWAY, and I am proud of what we did. And Thalia, Vera, and EmmZ? Rock on, girls. You behaved impeccably. Thank you for your moral stance, and your belief in people, the magazine, and even Maggie - right through to the bitter end.  It makes you better people, not worse.

 

M0lly Dench
Former Managing Editor
RUNWAY Magazine.

Would the Real Ms Dench Please Stand Up

Oh, how much fun was this.....

http://slimplythebest.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/bloggerplurker-challenge/

Make your avatar look like your RL self - or possibly see how close you can get. Me, I had trouble with the wrinkles and the lack of a jawline these days but otherwise, Ms Dench in this piccie is Ms Dench in SL anyway - I spent a long time trying to get my nose right well before any challenges were offered up!

Not only that, but my avie is 5'3" tall, as is my RL self.... and I'm usually the shortest person in any SL gathering except for the child avies.

So, here it is... .chuckle away all you like.

Landing Strip November 08

Born Free..

October has definitely been a month of polarised opinions and heated debate,
it seems. I ambled onto the fashion blogs last week and discovered Le Debate
as the French so charmingly put it, in full fig, raging across the grid.

What, I hear you ask, has caused such a furore and engaged so many people? I
wondered this myself given that some of the most amazing blogs out there in
ethernet land usually garner a laconic comment or six at the most and you
can practically guarantee that anything that gets more than that much
attention involves someone else's reputation lying twitching in a corner,
most often battered, bloody and bruised. But we are talking comments in the
dozens if not hundreds across a wide variety of different blogging sites on
this particular topic,  and I must admit for the most part they're keeping
it nice.  This is not always the case you understand, especially when
someone needs a large number of hits on their site and therefore decides to
decimate the reputation of some other poor soul in order to attract said
attention or possibly to inflate their pin-sized ego for a moment or two.

The debate, dear reader, is about Freebies. Now I could reiterate (or is
that regurgitate) the arguments to be found on the blogs and the passionate
and often faintly inflammatory responses. I stress, I could. However, you
can do that yourselves. If however, you wish to appear informed, articulate
and intelligent, I have kindly summarised some of the more interesting
aspects of the debate in order that you can chat about it amongst
yourselves.

It seems that a designer or two has taken exception to the amount of
freebies now available across the grid, the number of people that survive
solely on said freebies, the sheer volume of sim-hunts at any given point in
time and, I expect, the outstandingly poor manners of the majority of people
who do charge about hunting down freebies and never spending any of their
hard earned (or purchased) $L in the store of origin.

This has devolved into a number of most interesting streams of thought.

There are the bloggers of free items, who range from those who regard it as
a duty to report on every free item across the grid and cause stampedes to
all the good stores, to those who post up anything particularly noteworthy
thus presumably causing smaller but better quality avalanches of acquisitive
avatars.

There are designers who think freebies are fabulous, and dollarbies are
better, and if you sell enough dollarbies you can actually pay the rent (a
fine point I hadn't actually considered and have since decided is very
valid. After all, there is no point having wonderful goods if no-one comes
to your store at all and lets be realistic, 500 units moved at a $1 is
better than nothing moved at all.) There are designers who hate freebies and
refuse to give them out unless emblazoned with the store logo until one's
eyes water, and there are designers who have generous souls and contribute
lovely items to sim hunts and other such past-times, with the (in my opinion
quite realistic) viewpoint that if you hand out a quality freebie, people
will come back to you for something even nicer.

An interesting segue from this topic was the one that ventured into the,
shall we say, more socialistic arguments ranging about whether or not one
was a lesser class citizen or not, if one was not 'payment verified' and
spending the weekly shopping money on virtual shoes. This particular string
became quite interesting with those who were quite firm that everyone should
stop sponging off the freebies and start spending real money, and those who
were in a small panic in case people became so desperate to own the latest
fashion item that they might accidently spend the grocery money and have
starving dependents in RL.

Another favourite variation of mine was the one involving the 'fact' that
all bloggers get everything for free and photoshop everything to death
anyway. I can't remember who started that one, but all I can say is that if
that is the case I need to brush up my PS skills and start blogging, because
Editors don't seem to be on the list of people to send samples to!

A rather pertinent stream of thought moved onto whether or not manners are
actually just such a thing of the past that everyone is rude and grasping
anyway so why actually give them anything, and there was the deviation into
the whole sim-hunt activity and whether or not a sim-hunt was good, bad,
boring or ridiculous, and lastly there was a couple of quite interestingly
nervous posts from relatively new bloggers who aren't sure whether or not
they are now in trouble because they write tips for newbies which - again in
my opinion quite rightly - point out where quality items reside and how to
Look Good Almost Immediately After Arriving.

My conclusions at the end of a vastly entertaining week on the blogs are the
same ones I keep coming back to every time I have a good think about SL and
what it means to the average av.

Its all about personal choice. If you are a designer, either give away
freebies or don't. Its up to you, and you don't have to defend your
decisions. If you are a person who detests lag and hates other people, I'd
probably recommend you give up sim hunts. On the other hand, if you just
think the whole finding cute things concealed as tiny shiny lollies all over
someone else's sim is fun - enjoy. There are lots of them around and just
because several people have gone public with their hatred of the events, I
don't think they'll be stopping any time soon.

I'd hate to think that SL is also populated with fashionistas so conceited
that anyone who is wearing a freebie or isn't payment verified is somehow a
lesser being, but practicality tells me that intolerance is pretty global
both in and out of world. But I would urge the fashionistas to have a little
think about the following:

Amazing as it may seem, there is an enormous community in Second Life that
Doesn't Care About Fashion. After you've picked yourself up off the floor
and recovered from the shock, hold that thought.  There are lots of people
who are here to have fun - and its not about the shoes.

M0lly.

THE PUMPKIN AVENGERS

I think, if you get really busy in SL, that sometimes you forget how much absolute, sheer fun it can be, sometimes.

I had this brought home to me on Friday 3rd October, when I got up to lots of mischief - my very first griefing episode!  I've never griefed anything before, and suspect I might never do it again, and I'm sure anyone silly enough to read this would realise I'm not a supporter of griefing at all.

I've never thought it would be much fun, really, to trash someone's else's place, and I was most upset myself a couple of months back when I arrived on my sim to discover someone had carelessly left 365 nuclear weapons belching smoke and looking ominous in the air above my house. How rude, I thought.

However, that was before the formation of the Pumpkin Avengers.

 

Well, not really. Griefing is completely unacceptable. Having a bit of fun, however, is OK, where respect and a sense of humour are involved. Now, my beloved SL boss, the fabulous Miss Maggie Mahoney, is busy Building Something. I'm not at liberty to say what - though I'm sure I'll be skiting like mad soon.

 And so, Vera CAnning and EmmZ Tzara, who were busy Inspecting the Area Not to be Discussed, sent me a TP and mentioned that they were up to unspeakable mischief. Naturally I broke all land-speed records to be in on the fun.

Vera, EmmZ and I have been working for RUNWAY since the beginning. We're a bit of a tight team and it did seem to me that should Mischief be called for, I couldn't be in better company.

The Area not to be Discussed was, in our humble opinion, looking a bit bland in its unfinished state and a desperate desire to cover it completely in Pumpkins was born. So we did. LOL.  And the odd ghost, a fence or two with skulls as well. Then of course we had the bright idea that we'd better take a photo, wearing sunglasses to conceal our identity.

Thus the Pumpkin Avengers were born.

However, it has to be said, Maggie had the last word. Our disguise clearly wasn't as effective as we thought.

Thinking how lovely it was to receive a gift from my boss, I was silly enough to click on it.

I've never had the experience of having my head flip upside and my neck stretch a metre, before. EmmZ and Vera tell me they were also Double-Griefed, so we'd have to say "Caught, Big Time."

But, lord it was fun. Where will the Pumpkin Avengers strike next?

Landing Strip October 08

An Oxymoron...

 

Well, what a month it's been. And just my luck, to be on RL holidays and actually miss all the excitement.
The best laid plans, etc... as they say - I fired up the geriatric laptop, upgraded all the releases I'd missed, connected it up and tested it out, checked with the destination hotel ("Do you have high speed internet access?"), pondered the sheer tragedy of my life when I considered that the first question I asked was not "Do you have room service/in room massage/spa bath/free champagne", decided the hell with it, I LIKE my second life, and was relatively confident that heading off to the Nation's Capital was safe, only to discover.....

 

No Internet Access. "It's being upgraded, madam,but we do have dial-up from your room." Dial-up? I'm in the capital city of my country, its 2008, and someone is telling me they even know what dial-up is? There aren't words to describe my reaction, though incendiary, and incandescent are both great words. And fairly accurate.

 

On about Day 5 of my stay - and it's production week at RUNWAY, a week in which going away was dangerous even in a best case scenario which this was rapidly turning out NOT to be - the hi-speed wireless came back.
But ONLY in the breakfast room, a darkened place in which I sit, dear reader, at 9pm at night, thinking that it is somehow appropriate that the October issue of RUNWAY, which I'm assured will be dark and mysterious (much like internet access at my hotel) is contributed to by myself, sitting in the dark discovering that despite hi-speed wireless internet in a 2.5metre wide range in the breakfast room, I still cannot connect to Second Life.

 

So I had to read online, like much of the rest of the SL world, that RUNWAY magazine has just passed the 50,000 readers mark for the September issue. Lucky them. Clearly I'm the only person in the world with DIAL UP ACCESS in my hotel. Hah.

 

I had actually intended to talk about customer service this month, as opposed to my complete lack of an RL, evidenced by the tic in my left eye and obsession with finding a hi-speed connection. And I shall still continue down the path of pondering the vagaries of customer service in a virtual world despite the fact that I'm sitting in the dark, alone in a strange hotel.

 

As regular readers of this column (seriously, if we have 50,000 readers, SOMEONE must have read my column at least once) will know, my tolerance levels for bad behaviour are low at the best of times and doesn't even register when particularly nasty trangressions of decency and good taste occur on the nearest planet to me. And so it is that my tolerance for poor  customer service is even lower in SL than it is in RL (and at the moment, the owners of my hotel chain ought to be shaking in their boots.)

 

I've lost count of the times I've not received an item that I've purchased in SL, and can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that the seller of the item in question has replaced it without an argument, or ignoring the first five IMs, or indeed ignoring the request at all.

 

It seems to me that a virtual item is even more important than an RL item. After all, in RL, you watch the shop assistant pop the object of your current desires into a nice bag, wrapped in rustly tissue paper and full of the promise of eternal beauty the second you get it home and onto your person.... so the opportunities to be deeply disappointed when you open the bag and find it missing, are somewhat limited.

 

In SL, the chances that it won't be in the bag by the time you get home are significantly higher, depending on the day, the Release Candidate, the number of people on the grid, what your sim owner is actually doing to the sim that day and  whether or not Linden Labs have decided to upgrade some peculiar router-hooky-looking-widget thingy that holds the synapses of your region together.

 

So it was with utter amazement that I logged on (BEFORE I was silly enough to go on holidays to an alleged Centre of Excellence for my Nation) to discover an extraordinary Customer Service Event.

 

Other regular readers (I am still operating on the assumption that I'm sitting typing in the dark for SOME reason) will recall
that I am a bit of a silver-haired afficionado, and I had discovered with great joy that Novocaine Hair made a style not only particularly fetching but in several shades of grey, silver, and things euphemistically named Pearl and Silk that I deeply desired to make my own.

 

And did so, only to discover when I got home that the box I'd purchased didn't contain the colours I quite thought it would and that it actually wasn't an absent-minded moment on my part - a highly likely event -  but a small faux-pas on the part of the seller.

 

Having dropped the usual notecard, expecting never to hear from them again, I was beyond amazed when I logged in and discovered that Novo Zimerman had, without fanfare, note or other self-serving comment, just dropped me the entire colour range for that style. And, when I wrote to say thank you, again didn't need to reply telling me how fabulous they were. They just are.

 

Congratulations and well done to Novo Zimerman and Novocaine Hair. There should be more like you - and I sincerely hope there soon will be.

 

Bravo. Now, if you could just have a quick chat to my hotel chain? I'd really like to be able to log on again soon.

 

My Kingdom for a Desk...

You know, on September the 1st,  the ninth issue of RUNWAY Magazine came out. That's 7 monthly issues, 1 Bridal Revue, and 1 special feature on the Merovingi Fashion Awards. Who would have thought? And talking of thinking, it occurred to me today that I tend to stand about in SL staring vaguely into space when I'm Doing Stuff, rather vaguely, you know, instead of actually sitting down like 'normal' editors do, LOL. 

So I decided I needed an office, a pair of glasses and a desk. You see the result before you.

   

Landing Strip September 08

There's nothing like a major - and much anticipated and therefore incredibly
laggy - event in Second Life, to absolutely polarise opinions and cause the
blogs to groan under the strain of opposing viewpoints, heated arguments and
indignant rebuttals. The topic of which is, naturellement, What Really
Causes Lag?

I speak of course, of Hair Fair 2008. The excitement has been building, the
sneak previews escalating, hints, gossip, scandal and even a rumoured
bust-up between two of the major players, have kept us all entertained and
excited, not to mention the sheer thrill of hoping that we're going to find
the hair we've long been looking for. And this column is not here to discuss
whether or not I - or anyone else - actually found what they were looking
for.

I too was once guilty of bling-crimes against humanity and learnt the hard
way that things that attach to my person offend, dazzle, or slow down the
avatars in my immediate vicinity.  I have spent much time metaphorically
beating my breast and crying out "mea culpa" in an attempt to atone for
ruining anyone else's experience at some point in the past, so it was
wearing the grand total of 5 prims on my Avatar Rendering Cost display that
I ventured off to Hair Fair 2008.

My deepest thanks to skin designers intelligent enough to offer at least one
version of a skin with 'built in hair', for life's little laggy moments, and
I decided after I arrived that I didn't need my shoes anyway, so I took
those off too, getting my total down to 1 prim. Additional kudos are awarded
to skin designers who manage to make feet look roughly attractive in SL, a
not inconsiderable challenge.

I then spent the next couple of hours wading around in glue, waiting for
things to rezz and thoroughly enjoying myself. I hear you ask how this could
be possible - the enjoyment bit, I mean - and I am delighted to share with
you all my new latest game on laggy sims...   Who is the avatar with the
single greatest number on the prim count? Hours of amusement can be derived
from this activity, but there is a side effect.  The side effect is
uncontrollable rage and a desire to beat the offending avatar(s) to death
with a stiletto, assuming that a shoe could actually be rezzed for the
purpose.

Now, there is a school of thought - which may be 100% correct for all I know
- that says that it doesn't matter what the avatar rendering cost is, the
server controls the lag. As I say, this could well be true.

However, there's a perception that optional appendanges, bling, and flexi
hair slow the whole thing down, and most of us accept that and do our very
best to keep it to a minimum. This is called Common Courtesy, though it
doesn't seem to be very common.  The organisers of Hair Fair 2008 dropped a
polite and beautifully worded notecard on each of us on arrival, asking for
us to cut those prims to a minimum. Thus my removal of the last 4 prims on
my feet. (Another great game is watching the prim counts drop as people
arrive. I thoroughly recommend it whilst you're waiting for things to rezz.)

So, we all ASSUME that stuff causes lag. We've been asked to remove anything
unnecessary in the nicest possible way, and the vast majority of SL'ers are
delighted to comply. In fact, a number of bloggers offered the How Low Can
You Go challenge which is yet another fun activity as you mix and match,
aiming to look as sophisticated as possibly whilst bald and mostly naked. I
really enjoyed that activity, too, my thanks for so much fun go to those who
put the challenge out there. However - and this is where the uncontrollable
rage comes into it for me - the number of people who just don't care, aren't
interested in anyone else's experience, who SO need to be beautiful
(presumably based on the assumption everyone is actually looking at them) at
all costs, and who then become rude, aggressive and abusive when anyone asks
them to reduce their count, is absolutely astounding. I cannot believe that
avatars with this level of arrogance, ignorance, and sheer bloody-mindedness
can possibly fare well in a world where everyone is trying to recreate their
own version of utopia, though I suppose the side effect of that is that if
we start behaving like them and telling them what morons they actually are,
we're no better than they are, really. I was striving hard for a zen moment at the time, though.

Time that some incredibly clever scripter comes up with an automatic banning
mechanism that throws you out if you exceed a clearly defined, pre (and
politely worded) warning notice, and then allows you back if you comply, at
major events. (Yes, yes, I know that Linden Labs are to blame for everything
in the history of anyone's bad experience ever in Second Life, and its all
their fault and they should fix it immediately but lets not get our
ambitions and our capabilities mixed up here, shall we?)

Whilst 'policing' and 'prims' don't feel quite right in a sentence in Second
Life to me, it may be time. And lest you think I'm arguing over a couple of
hundred prims let me reassure you that I'm really not that picky but......
the winner of the gold medal in my two hour experience at the Hair Fair came
in at a rendering cost of 8057 prims. And all of it tacky. Please, please do
NOT come back next year. Or preferably at all. It'll be SO much nicer without you.

Quality Software Assurance

Well, it's 10.30pm my time, and I can't login to Second Life. According to the Grid Status report on the SL website, they've 'closed logins to allow the database to recover'. Sounds fabulous. Actually, it sounds silly. If the damn database is that fragile, it needs help.

In RL, I've worked in IT (amongst other things, LOL) for over 25 years. My speciality, if one could call it that, is Breaking Things. I'm pretty good at it. I used to get to break things for real, now I tell other people how to break stuff. Some of my ex-staff Break Things for some of the biggest companies in the world. And boy, can they break stuff <grin>.

My current role is reviewing, designing and rebuilding all of the testing standards, guidelines and processes for a Really Large Company (unfortunately, one that is still stuck in the Dark Ages but, baby steps, baby steps, we'll get them there.)

I was reasonably incensed to find that I couldn't login to SL, and that coincidentally this just happened to be about ten minutes after I'd downloaded the latest Release Candidate upgrade. Now, working in software quality assurance, or as the rest of the world calls it, Testing, for so long, I don't believe in coincidences.

I do believe in testing. So, in one of those moments, you know, when fantasy and reality actually collide, I had a vision of working for Linden Labs (from home in my pjs, forget getting dressed up in heels and makeup if I'm in MY office at home) and heading up a Rescue Mission to sort out their testing. Because my view on it, to be honest, is that it's pretty crappy, and I"ve been watching for a while now. Sadly, I can't take off the Testing Hat when playing games, which is tragic and probably indicates I need to either get a life or a real job.

So I headed on over to the Linden Labs employment pages - well, what else is a girl to do when she can't log in and buy shoes - and looked at all the jobs they've got vacant. Imagine my utter fascination to learn that they don't have a single job, for Testers. I'm beginning to think this may well explain why the thing is crashing ten minutes after a new release. (No, really? Really.) They've got something called a Quality Assurance Engineer, and I got a bit excited about that til I read the job spec. Which is full of techie terms and engineering references and reinforced my viewpoint that, in all seriousness, someone needs to grab a few senior Lindens by the ears and go 'USER ACCEPTANCE TESTING', (well, along with automated test harnesses, no, not the ones you've got, some really sexy ones and boy do I have a framework for you), some SERIOUS SVP (for the technically minded amongst you, that means the S,the V, AND the P, not just bits thereof) and probably a major overhaul of the integration and infrastructure testing as well, not to mention a spot of SERIOUS configuration management. Oh, and I really think they way they're developing code could do with a look-see (I've got suspicions about branching that are probably well founded.) Maybe some decent gateway testing? Hmmm, we could probably... I need to stop, or I'll have redesigned their entire development and testing process (the one I'm not sure actually exists) for free, LOL.

But what would I know? I'm just an avatar that hangs out in SL and writes about fashion.

Hey, Philip? If you're listening, talk to me. You guys need a grumpy old av who's been testing for 25 years and has seen it all - not to mention tested most of it!  Catch me inworld. LOL.

Hair Fair 2008 - Prim Manners

Well, I have ventured, survived, and spent. Far too much, it must be said...  As expected, it was a little like swimming through glue. But worth it - there are some fabulous new styles and even I, with a really specific set of criteria, managed to come home with 15 different do's.

I like to wear my hair short, and I like my hair to be silver, or grey. This is indeed the way it is in RL - LOL - and I'm not about to start kidding myself in SL, either. But the designers don't do grey or silver very well, I suspect its not popular, in a place where youth, beauty and the pursuit of the Barbie Body is the goal of a huge percentage of avs - and so I bravely continue to hunt and hunt and once in a while, up pops a little gem to reward me.

This Hair Fair, it was House of Heart's Shelby. I'm in lurve.... its a viciously different style, but I really applaud the designers for going out there and doing it. And in some lovely shades of grey and silver, as well.

The big whinge though, is.....

You do tend to see it all in SL, but every so often you just shake your head and go.. 'God, people are ignorant.'  And I mean ignorant in the sense that they just do not give a rats arse - to put it elegantly - about anyone other than their teensy little selves.

I ventured off to Hair Fair with an avatar rendering cost of 1prim. Yep, that was 1 prim. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt - a gorgeous new release from Celeron Voom called Japan, but a t-shirt none-the-less - no shoes, no accessories, and a skin that includes hair. Despite repeated calls from various people on the sims, to reduce prims, not to mention a notecard on arrival that was pretty damn specific, my Hall of Shame has to go to the following avatars who clearly don't think that everyone else's experience is important at all, and completely ignored any requests to reduce.

Here, btw, is the 1prim wonder... after which you'll find the Hall of Shame.

And no, I don't actually care if you read this. I hate to point out the obvious, but if the senior editor of SL's premium fashion magazine can wander around with no shoes and a rendering cost of 1 prim, darlings, so can you. Truly, NO-ONE was looking at you - except me, and I was looking in stunned disbelieve at your ignorance, not your gorgeousness.

Emma Rope 3794

Maxima Nikolaidis 4614

haruha Mayo, 4635

juniorknight Carter, 4749

Vixen Babenco, 4830

sweety Mizser, 5103

Shug Gurbux 5423

The second prize for sheer ignorance is awarded to...

navina Waco, with a whopping 6790 of incredibly tasteless bling, attachments, flexi's and appendages.

Unbelievable as it may seem, this is totally eclipsed by the appalling performance of Alyosha Abaleta, who at a phenomenal 8057 prims, seemed to think it was ok to be out on a full sim, with everyone struggling against lag.

Do us all a favour, don't come back next year.

 

PHOTOFASHION CONTEST...

Primperfect and Orange Island have announced a fabulous fashion photocomp - see Competitions, on the right, for details.