Greetings Seekers of Romance,

hurry up. The birthday region is only opened until 6th of July. If you don’t go there now, you will miss a chance to see something you can tell your virtual grandchildren about

A good starting point to prepare for your visit is to read the “Dallier’s Hope Messenger“. And while you are at Dallier’s hope, the comet that is hosting this year’s birthday region, don’t forget to spend some time at our exhibit at SL6B Nano (67, 182, 23). Send a postcard from our tropical post office at Dallier’s Hope to your friends and invite them to visit this far away comet with you. Thanks to teleports, it’s only a heartbeat away.

Whatever you do,  ♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

today we read about another U-turn at the Second Life Blog.  Another restriction in a world once known for it’s freedom is imposed on the inhabitants. Did a puritan zealot seize power in SL? Adult content is to be banned from mainland to a separated continent (by some in the forums already called a “ghetto”) where only age-verified avatars will be able to teleport to.

Are you age-verified? I know a lot of people who aren’t, but are regular visitors of so called adult areas in Second Life. Why aren’t they age-verified then? I guess there are a lot of reasons, one not wanting to share this kind of information with the company comissioned by Linden Lab with that job. Furthermore age verification doesn’t work in a lot of countries since the necessary information is guarded by law and can’t be easily checked by a company.

Anyway, first gambling is forbidden, banking was the next step, now it’s so called adult content. I still remember the time of the gambling ban. Many comments predicted at that time that escorts and sex would be the next victims of the “moral majority”. Is Second Life becoming a “Little America” with a puritan zealot as a mayor?

I am deeply worried about the increasing restrictions in Second Life. I am an aged-verified adult (yes, we really exist) and I came here to “play” an adult (18+) game. I didn’t expect to find Disneyland and I don’t want to be part of Second Disneyland. …I found gambling in SL boring and the ever present gambling ads even revolting. I never invested in banks or owned one myself. I don’t visit adult places very often, but I own a few adult animations and even a product from Xcite! But this is not about my preferences and what I find revolting or not. The question is, what is next on the agenda to be banned? Having a concealed weapon in one’s inventory and who doesn’t have a gun in some old freebie pack? Drinking? Are alcoholic beverages offered to american citizens under 21 in SL? Smoking? Are there still virtual cigarettes offered in SL? LOL! LOL? Bit by bit freedom and liberty die.
As far as I can see at the moment, “Love me tender” won’t be rated as  as adult, but merely as mature. But will we pass the next purity test? We encourage the love between people, no matter what sex (Oops: should be gender probably) or which genderal (lol) preference they have. As far as I know, that gets you stoned (don’t get me wrong ) in some not so virtual parts of this planet.

Linden Lab brings forward the argument that only very few of us are interested in adult rated content. That is probably true, but not gambling myself doesn’t mean that I want to be protected from gambling by a benevolent authority. Not wearing hairy ears and a tail myself doesn’t mean that I am affronted by someone who does and need to be protected from viewing this person.

To me it seems as if once again the forces of the uptight try to impose their narrow minded view on the majority and the majority keeps quiet to stop them from whining.

Just the rumbling of an old liberal? What is your opinion on that topic? Comments please.

As long as we are still allowed to do it
♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

Just a little personal information: My muse, friend, lover and business partner Rockje Cortes agreed to become my SL partner on January, 24th 2009. We know each other for over 16 months now, spent hundreds of happy hours together, endured a few unhappy ones, worked a lot together, laughed a lot together, danced for hours without end and … (use your fantasy ).

We had a little private ceremony, just the two of us with Aphrodite and Cupid as witnesses to our partnership. May love bless us every day of our virtual life.

Follow our example and ♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque

All hail to M and a Hi to Jack. While the orcs keep on banging on Second Life, the forces of good surrendered to the overwhelming evil. They abandoned their homes and beautiful creations, the work of hundreds of man-years are lost forever. People left this second life in hope for a better third one elsewhere or  are sitting somewhere in hiding, licking their wounds and are waiting for a Linden-led bot-commando that will hi-Jack (what an appropriate word) them to a secret SL prison on an abandoned sim somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Gloom and doom is the feeling in the hearts of plenty. The minions and lickspittles of evil reign supreme and even fill up my blog with comments. Vae victis - Woe to the vanquished!

What remains after the lost war? A deep feeling of mistrust and the certain knowledge that Second Life isn’t a world yet, where planning and investments make any sense. It’s not mature enough for any serious business as long as basic conditions are changed by the wink of an eye by the Lindens. Keep your RL companies out of this game, at least for the time being.

What are my personal plans? Until being hi-jacked, I try to go on. The war is lost and Valentine is near. Maybe the smell of roses can cleanse my nose of the rancid odor the recent Linden actions have left. Nobody likes being cheated, me neither.

I will open my ears wide and hope that Cupid comes back again to my side and once more whispers into my ears “Spread the Love” and I will gladly obey.

Watch out for my next post,it will be filled with love and romance again.

For now:
La esperanza muere ultima • Hope dies last • Dum spiro spero

Yours,

Villain Baroque

It’s unbelievable, but as people are leaving Second Life in the thousands, islands (so called OpenSims) are given up and all indicators for land show a steep decline, Linden Lab publishes the outdated but positive numbers for Q3.

Just have a look at today’s numbers (No. 12, 2008) and you know more about the true situation at hand:

That seems to me like whistling in the dark and has to be taken as serious as publishing the stocks from the end of September.

Meanwhile Linden Lab doesn’t answer it’s customers urgent calls for answer. A forum that has been opened by Linden Lab for discussing it’s latest land policy (a rise of 67% in monthly fees for almost half of the land owners) with it’s customers shows more than 2′500 posts by customers, but is ignored by Linden Lab’s management.

It’s a sad thing, how Second Life is destroyed by the inability of Linden Lab’s management to acknowledge a mistake and take back changes that let thousands of residents turn away from Second Life.

“O tempora, o mores”. More then 2′300 posts on the Official Forum about the unjust increase in tier, there are protests all over SL and the Lindens announce a contest. In which world are they living in? Not in mine it seems.

Meanwhile, no answers in the forum they opened for discussion with Jack and M, but it’s no discussion, since no (almost no) Lindens are showing up.

Let me quote Ciaran Laval on the forum:

They’re too busy deleting posts in the Linden prize thread to look at this one.

Meanwhile join the protest at www.slmembers.com and www.saveouropenspaces.org.

Yes it can. Another bug by Linden Lab: Katt Linden, the Communication Manager of Second Life, posted “Where to find updates from Linden Lab” at the official Second Life blog. It seems, even Linden Lab recognized that it was very hard for their customers to find the necessary information on their many sites.

OMG, Katt failed again. The first link is supposed to link to the status page of Second Life. But what did Katt? She linked to https://status.secondlifegrid.net/ instead of http://status.secondlifegrid.net/ which is the correct address. She was told so in a comment by Garth FairChang at 10:38 AM:

Your attempts to hide bad news are amusing. LOL

BTW. one of your links just gives a 404 error. If I was feeling helpful I would say which.

At 10:55 AM, Winter Ventura took pity with Katt, as she apparently was unable to locate the missing link and she gave her detailed informations:

first link.. 404′d

Alas, more than 24 hours later, this error is still not corrected. People, especially Newbies using the link provided by Katt will experience Linden Lab quality work first hand – SNAFU.

We all do mistakes, and this error with http and https has happened to myself more than once, but after being told twice (correction: thrice) one should be able to correct it on such an important page. Maybe the whole manpower of Linden Lab is concentrating on censoring the forum and blog entries at the moment. No time for such mundane things as de-bugging blog entries (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

I have written less in this blog during the last weeks than planned, because I was fully occupied with creating and preparing romantic stuff for christmas. Just when I felt ready for a post telling my reasders what lovely things to expect from Love me Tender for this christmas season, I found out

WE ARE AT WAR

How? Why? In short: The Lindens plan to raise the tier for so called OpenSims by outrageous 66% in January 2009. Read the post at the Official Linden Blog or at the Forum, but if you want to get an excellent overview, read the post of Vint Falken at his blog.

This last maniac move of the Lindens is ruining our business as it is ruining the business of many others. But it’s not only bad for business but making a lot of other people living on such sims homeless as well.

While this war is going on, I will post nothing new here and I will stop creating any new things, because I am not sure, if I want to stay in a Second Life like this.

A snapshot by Alesha Destiny

Tears are in my eyes while I write and even my friend Cupid with his words “Spread the love” can’t cheer me up at the moment. As much as I despise Hate, Violence and War , I know this is not the time to stand back and watch, but I feel the duty to stand up and fight for my Second Life, for your Second Life. My online time is dedicated to the resistance movement in SL at the moment and I urge you, to become a member of one of the many resistance groups, too. Even if you don’t own or live on an OpenSim, this move of the Lindens affects you as well, because Second Life will be another Life (and a poorer one for that), if they succeed with their plans. One of the in-world groups is “+SOS+” (Save our OpenSpace Sims). If you can’t find it in Search, as the Lindens are censoring and cheating like wild at the moment, just search for Villain Baroque under people, click my profile and click the group “+SOS+” in my profile.

Yes, we fight back. No griefing, but we protest at the Welcome Centers of Second Life and other places where we get a chance too meet Lindens, since they don’t answer our questions in the forums.

Let me end with a few lines of the song “Do you hear the people sing?” (Les Misérables):

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echos the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

... and maybe I have a chance to listen to my friend Cupid again some day, since he has fled from my side while I wrote these lines. Seekers of Romance, I leave you alone for a while, since Romance has fled my heart for the time being as I see the Lindens knowingly and willingly destroying the Second Life I love.

Once again: JOIN THE WAR!

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

“If you do not find something at Love Me Tender that you want to give your date then you are not a romantic.  Here you will find gifts atypical of other shops.   Near the landing area you will find talking towels for him and for her <209, 126, 24> and sand writings, <194, 118, 24>  a Love Me Tender original.  There are sand writings available in other languages <183, 132, 24>.  Express your love in shells with writings made from them <167, 116, 24>. “

Quote from: Wonderful Evenings, Nuba (40, 32, 21)

A nice recommendation, isn’t it? Their complete review about “Love me tender” is much longer and you can get a copy of it at Cupid’s Palace.

If you don’t know WONDERFUL EVENINGS, you should give them a try. They have a wonderful idea, they sell guides with the best places in Second Life to bring a date. Their guides are priced at 5 L$ per recommendation, which seems a fair price to me, considering that this will save you hours of looking around on your own and spares you and your date the frustration of wasting  time with visiting places that are worth no visit.  They strive to become a kind of Guide Michelin for Romance in SL. So, if you ever wonder again “Where shall we go tonight?“, use the recommendations of Wonderful Evenings, I do.

And as my friend Cupid says: ♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

Unbelievable, but we made it to the cover of “FreeLife Magazine” issue 24. They liked the things we creates as you do (and as we do). Go to www.freelifemagazine.com and read this article for yourself.

This business success was made possible through the inspiring nature of Rockje Cortes, my beautiful muse. Go read the article and afterwards pay our sim Rockje a visit. And maybe you will find Rockje and me sipping champagne and celebrating with our friend Cupid there.

As our friend Cupid says: ♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque