Tastes like chicken

I haven't posted anything for a while and this is why.

I'm totally addicted to Sion Chickens. They are evil and so damn cute. Don't try it unless you are prepared to build a farm and rob liquor stores to buy feed for them all. Just say no to eggs. Reminds me of that old anti-drug commercial with the frying pan. This is your brain on chickens.

My name is James Hoorenbeek and I'm a chicken addict.

Strum Diesel Performing Live at Orbit

STRUM DIESEL aka Sean Kagalis in RL, has been playing guitar & wrting songs since he was 13, it wasnt long till he knew that performing was to be his destiny. Personal experience is the primary source for subject matter in Sean's work. When not lamenting his heartbreak or the heartbreak he has created, his voice is dedicated to explicating socio-political issues that are constantly perverted or altogether ignored by mainstream media.



Life as Strum has given him a renewed sense of purpose as a performer & writer. This renewed sense not only involves having the time of his life performing as much as possible, in as many places as possible, but also truly being a part of what will help mankind enter into an elevated state of awareness of what it means to be human.



Strum will be performing live at club Orbit on Sunday, July 5th at 6 PM SLT.

Leather Night is BACK!

Leather party at the old club Sodom
That's right, starting Sunday July 5th at 8:00 PM, the infamous leather night at the club formerly known as Sodom is back with the original DJ, the famously filthy Dextrum Boucher.

On the dance poles we have one of the original dirty Sodom gogo boys, the incredibly sexy and hilarious (RL) cowboy, Tanner Bernstien and the debut of a brand new smoking hot dancer, Kristopher Draconia.

The planets must be in alignment for this because I also got the other original dirty Sodom go go boy, cute funny and very sexy, Caivan Hancroft. Caivan will be your host for the evening.

See you there!


Caivan
















Tanner


















Kristoper

What's New at Timbuktu - June 2009

The drive-in diner is now open! Slum Dog Millionaire is currently playing, and the burgers are excellent. This is a great place to go on a date or with friends. Anybody have some good sculpty french fries?


















I replaced the sex engine in the Hawaiian bed in tiki hut 1 on Sodom Island. It now has an extreme gay version from Toothfairy Tizzy.


I got my open space (homestead) region back. Now I just have to decide what to do with it. More building projects!




The script issues in my hippo secure units are finally resolved so I can start advertising the rentals. Wooot!






I built my first house from scratch yo.
It took about 3 days including aligning prims and scripting doors etc. Check it out. It's a little big for the parcels but I may make a scaled down version for the rentals. When I get all the custom scripting done - doors, windows, lights media, I'm going to box it up and sell it. It'll have a widescreen TV and just about everything you need except furniture.

I'm putting together an event for the weekend of the 4th. It will be Sunday the 5th. Starting at 6 PM SLT I have Strum Diesel, singing live and playing guitar. At 8 of course is the re-debut of leathernight. In between, idk. I'm trying to get the fanny pack, but they may have a RL scheduling conflict.

I'm still looking for fun reliable folks to plan, manage and promote events on my sim. I know what I'm good at, and running a club is not one of them - too much stress and drama. If you ever wanted your own club in SL but don't have a sim, hit me up.

Don't like your SL viewer? Try a different one!

This is a cross-post from something I just wrote on the SL blogs.

Last night I went to a club and noticed half the crowd (maybe 15 of 30) were using the Greenlife Emerald viewer, including me.

When you use Emerald you can see anyone around you also using it because their name turns green.

SL is going green! Yeah!!

I highly recommend the Emerald viewer as an alternative to the LL official client. What I don't know, is how much of the contaminated code stream from LL will find it's way into future Emerald releases. I just don't know how that process works, but I would love to find out.

Besides being nice and stable, Emerald incorporates many features found in various HUDs right in the interface. Avatar radar, with many useful features, stop animations, ground sit, phantom/non physical mode and free temporary uploads - a huge boon for anyone who designs textures or edit sounds, etc. You don't have to pay the $10L until you are satisfied that you have the final version. If you're not a designer, I don't want to hear about how little $10L is, because you have no idea how many iterations can add up. There are some other little things and some I'm no doubt forgetting. One other nice detail is that the editor gives you more decimal places for very precise alignment and sizing.

This is just one of many many viewers available that are NOT under the control of LL. The SL wiki lists 15 of them. Some of them allow you to connect to other grids. There may be another viewer that works better for you. Yesterday I discovered that there is a team of programmers working on an opensource viewer project called Snowglobe, headed by Phillip Linden!! Now why do you suppose the former CEO of Linden labs would be doing this? Kinda makes you go hmmmm, don't it?

When I first heard about the supremely boneheaded things the Lindens were up to with the 1.23 viewer release, I threatened to start a "green revolution". Well the Linden's are clearly not listening to anyone, so I think the time has come. I would love to see the look on their faces when they realize that NOBODY is downloading their horrible viewer.

Spread the word!

I have another T-shirt to make.

You can get my free censorship protest T-shirt on xstreet, but it has a bad word on it so I had to make it "mature". That means several extra clicks to find it - if it were easy, I guess people might accidentally see something that offends them and die of heart failure while shopping online. Well in defense of LL, this is about the same as before they bought Xstreet and started mucking with it.

He's Baaaaaak!

After a brief hiatus, the infamous Jordyn Carnell is back with a vengeance.

Don't miss this party. It's going to be awesome!

Get a Free T-Shirt (Fuck Censorship)

I'm giving away a T-shirt on xstreetsl.com to help spread awareness about the latest fuckery of SL by the Lindens.


Click here to open the page.


Enjoy

Connecting Secondlife and real life through my ASS! ROFLMAO

Well now I've done it. I ordered the Xcite compatible USB vibrator. Holy crap that should be fun. Now I'm trying to get my SL BF to get one too.


I will let you know when it arrives. Stay tuned for updates.

Fierce Fanny Drag Party

My friend Isaiah Tolsen put on another amazing party at Fierce yesterday. This one was a drag party and it was a fucking fall on the floor and roll around laughing your ass off riot. If you weren't there you should have been, because you missed me in drag with no panties. Hahahaha. That's a sight you don't see every day. The only bad part was that the boys didn't flirt with me like they do when I'm in boy clothes, but that's OK I guess since I do have a boyfriend (Adan Nitely).

The DJ was fearsome Fanny Ferryhill,
and (s)he was fantastic. An actual comedian and the funniest faggitiest DJ in SL. I was laughin' the whole time she was talkin.














That's my buddy, the infamous JC in the corner. I told him he had to come see me in a dress. I also TP'd in my friend Hanni the trannie. Lucky bitch didn't even have to dress - I never knew pumps were so complicated. It took me half an hour to get the shit figured out.

Issy (Isaiah) was lookin very fierce her ownself. A little like Tyra Banks, with big big flexy wig. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of him. Yes, I know my pronouns are a little crazy but what can you do?


There were a bunch of Fannies at the party. It's a club apparently with a group. I had no idea.. anyway, I'm off to sign up an alt called Fanny so I can join. Laughing is good for you they say.


This here is not Fanny, it's Ronald or Roland or something. The funniest looking avatar I think I've ever seen. I couldn't stop staring.


Well I'm looking forward to more fabulous parties at Fierce. Stay tuned.

Fuck you very much Dick

Why is the Cheney monster still on the TV trying to scare the bejeezus out of us? Go live in Dubai ya war criminal or wait quietly for your indictment.

Jeez.

I think he's setting us up so when something bad happens in the world, he can say, I told you so. If only we would keep torturing and rendering and locking people up forever without a trial, the world would be all safe and snugly as houses.

He knows he, and the Decider Guy, have been very very bad, all the dirty laundry is slowly coming out, and it's not pretty. The shit's gonna hit and there just won't be any way to ignore the fact that they committed mass murder and theft on a scale never sceen before in the history of the world. How can the justice department, even such as it is now, not put them on trial? We know where they buried the bodies. Better yet, disappear them to Gitmo and waterboard them until they confess to the Manson murders and every other unsolved crime. Then ask Darth Vadar if he still thinks that toture is swell. That would be fitting.

Also, Liz Cheney, nobody cares what you think of your daddy, so please shut the fuck up.


Happy Pride Y'all

Bottomless Birthday

I just want to say thanks to everyone who came to my birthday party last night. I had a blast. DJ Yummy and my boy Adan tied in the "best bottom" contest and split the $1000L prize.

We raised a few thousand linden for second pride. A few furries came, making things more interesting, and most of my friends were there at least part of the time. Seems a lot of them work in clubs. Go figure.

Bottomless Party - Second Pride Fundraiser

Re: The Space Shuttle - I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying

I woke up yesterday and my clock radio, tuned to public radio, was talking about the space shuttle launch and how everything was going flawlessly and the whether forecast was good. Half awake, and for no reason I know of, I thought, oh shit, that's not going to go well. Then I forgot about it, until just now, when I heard about some issue - cracked tiles or something scarily familiar. I hope those folks make it back, but I have a bad feeling. Just wanted to put it on the record, for what it's worth. I hope I'm wrong and end up feeling like an idiot. I'm kinda used to that.

Censorship in Second Life?

Last night I got a bunch of IMs about how the new release candidate viewer was filtering all dirty words, including the word "sex". Of course it was late and I thought, yeah right, I'm going to bed. Being a curious person however, I had to see for myself. So this morning (technically afternoon), I loaded up the new viewer and tried it out.



Guess what....

It's TRUE. If you search on the word sex in the released client, you get lot's of results. I don't know how many exactly but you can imagine. In the latest pre-release candidate, you get zilch. It's the same with any words that refer to genitalia or sexual acts. Tits works, but not boobs or maybe the other way around. Anyway, the point is who decides this stuff? Even bondage, which is not strictly about sex, is blocked. In other words, all the keywords used in the groups and parcel descriptions of most adult oriented places, don't work. By the way, I checked the include mature box and I have been age verified forever, so it would seem to affect everyone using the new viewer.

I think they are going way too far and if the viewer is released this way, there will be an uproar that will make the reaction to the openspace fiasco look mild in comparison.

What do you think? Add your comments. I'm interested to see what the community thinks about this and other changes being made by LL to "clean up" SL.

Timbuktu Events

Thanks to everyone who came the birthday party I threw on Wednesday for my friend Adan, especially DJ Dex, Warren Sheppard, the boys from FIERCE, the dirty boys from old Sodom, and all the rest of my friends. This was my first event since I closed and rebuilt the sim starting in March. I just wish I had thought to take some pictures to put on here.
Next up:

Well everyone forgot my damn rezz day, so I'm not taking any chances with my RL birthday on May 20th. I am throwing my self a HUGE party. I think the theme is going to be bottomless, as in no pants. I'm not sure about the rest.. Just getting going on it. It will be a fundraising event for 2nd pride. Speaking of which, Timbuktu is going to be a sponsor this year so look for me there. The festival kicks off May 23rd and goes for about a week.

That's all I have planned for now. I'm in the process of finding some good people to help me with events. I can't do it alone, and I've learned my lesson about putting too much responsibility on one person. Hence, I won't be having any more general managers. That will be me, Pimp Daddy.

What's up with my shoes?: A Book Review

I wear a tag most of the time that says "did not lose a shoe". This is because I got tired of constantly being told "dude, you lost a shoe". At first it was cute, and I liked the attention, then it was old, now it's just annoying, and I know some people are doing it on purpose to annoy me. You know who you are.

Why not just put on both shoes you ask? Well, after all this time it's just become part of who I am in SL, and I deleted all my left shoes - just kidding, but the right ones are all organized in folders while the left ones are god only knows where in my inventory. So it would be a pain. Remind me, that's a good topic for another post.

note to self, next topic: How big is your inventory and how do you manage it?

The other issue with the shoe thing is that I get asked by a lot of people to explain it. I keep threatening to write it up in a note card, and just hand it out, but that seems a little impersonal. Now I can just tell them to read my blog post - problem solved.

In my SL profile is a concise explanation most people buy, but it's 90% bull crap.

"I never wear 2 shoes in SL as a reminder not to forget RL. You don't need shoes in a simulation of life. "

I think it sounds plausible, but it is BS, mostly because I don't actually have a RL. Well I'm doing good when I remember to eat and go to bed before I wake up with keyboard indentations on my cheek or with someone yelling in my headset to wake up and stop snoring. Being ADHD and living in a cow town doesn't really help, but honestly, I love SL and it's were I choose to spend a lot of my time.

Oh, I was on a tangent. So back to the shoe thing. Here's the real story...

There is no reason.

Hah! Don't you wish you could have the last couple of minutes back?

Just kidding, seriously.. this is what happened.

I lost a shoe. Hahahaha. I really did. I was a noobie then, and I have no idea how I did it but I wound up wearing one shoe (probably from the default library). Well that reminded me of the main character in a long fantasy novel I read a couple of years ago by Samual L. Delany called Dhalgren, which is also the name of the mythical city where it takes place. This kid (he went by "The Kid", because he lost his memory and didn't have a name), was a pretty baddass. He was mid twenty something, bisexual, brown - of indeterminate mixed race, and I kind of identified with him in a way. He wrote poetry (I wrote bad poetry in high school) and went around fighting and fucking in this crazy imaginary sort of post-apocalyptic town. He became sort of a reluctant leader of what was basically a street gang. There was no explanation of what happened to this city, somewhere USA, or his other shoe for that matter. So he lost his shoe, lost his memory and just kept walking around having adventures writing in a notebook, and having sex with boys and girls who tended to fall for him. There was some drug uses as well as I recall, but it was mostly incidental.


He never tried to find another pair of shoes (it was a boot actually, not a shoe), it just became part of his character to have one bare foot. He had callouses on the one foot and it was always way dirtier than the other. So you can see it was a pretty big element in the story, but not really part of the narrative. The other characters just accepted it. It is a very odd story that's hard to describe, but overall very worth reading. I guess it stuck with me, and now James Hoorenbeek has a little of "The Kid" in him, mostly by accident.

I think I'll read it again.

What's New at Timbuktu

HellOO everyone. Welcome to my new blog. Thanks for stopping by.
/me FOFL
I do crack myself up.

OK, a lot of you are probably wondering what the heck is up with me and my sim, so let's just get that out of the way.

A LOT has happened since I more or less fell off grid in February. At one point Timbuktu (that's my sim), was completely flattened to 10 meters and had zero prims on it. Similarly, my groups and friend list were empty. I guess I felt the need to purge. I'm calling it my mid-SL crisis.

Since then I have been rebuilding everything from the ground up. There are a few things recognizable from the old build, but for the most part, it's completely different. That's how I've spent almost all my time in world for the past few weeks. It's been very therapeutic.

Taking inspiration from the name Timbuktu, which I have no idea how I came up with, except it sounds cool, I built a club in the style of iconic Djinguereber Mosque from the RL Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa. That was a fun little project. It has everything you need for a party. The giant ancient coin is the sploder, the dance machine is a big drum and the couple dance machine is in the small drum. There are stripper poles, of course, and and some fun animations here and there if you look. Climb the rope from the ground floor to the open air dance floor and slide down the fire pole to make a cool exit. The contest board is well, just a contest board.



There is another party spot on the sim I'm calling Orbit. It was inspired by a couple of other builds I've seen on the grid, but it's pretty original I think. The floor is mostly transparent and it's about 50 meters above a massive region sized prim with the earth texture. You have to make sure you see it in the dark. It's just not the same otherwise. You can't tell from the picture that lots of things are moving. The effect is pretty cool IMHO. Marvin the Martian is the talking sploder, and the dance machine is in the "floor". I'm planning to rezz a space station above for a semi private space with a view of the party. I'll put a lap dance chair up in there.





Where is Club Sodom you ask? Well it's there, but now it's a ginormous round skybox at 1500 meters. I made my own sky and ocean. How do you like me now? It's a tropical island beach resort/club, and yeah, I know, been there, done that, but it's nice and has a lot of fun animations including 3 tiki huts you can rent by the hour and use the fully loaded beds. You can use the beds for free, but if you rent you can control the windows and door and security if it matters. I was going for a less tacky tristar crossed with HotnHung. I don't expect to have a lot of events there. We'll have to see how it works out. And yes, I rezzed all my uber tacky rainbow shit just to annoy you bitchy prim snobs who hate rainbows. I roll old school. I even made some more, so kiss my half black ass. Hahahhaha.



















I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with all this now that it's nearly complete. I don't think I ever want to be responsible for managing a lot of events on a regular basis again, or even be very involved. I'm burnt out. I am looking for people who would be interested in doing that in my club venues, but I don't want a general manager either. I have my reasons. I have a position description and application available in the Timbuktu main lobby. I am also open to having people come in and have an event independently, either one time or recurring, at no charge, just ask people to tip the club and mention the stores and rentals on the sim, oh and clean up afterwards. IM me or drop me a note if you need a cool place to have a party.

Let's take a break for a minute from the SL talk. I'll come back to it later. So Abby had 4 puppies on March 9th. 3 male and 1 female. They all look more or less alike this time - black and tan and no long haired. I have the puppy web cam on pretty often when I'm in world. I have another link where I sometimes show "other things" on cam, but you'll have to ask me for that one. ;-P



Meanwhile, I built a great big honkin mall with mostly mega prims. Turns out I like to make things big - who knew? I'm putting in some affiliate vendors in a few stores for now just because I can and it's easy. I like the MIA (men in action) clothes. I actually wear it quite a bit or I wouldn't be selling it. The western wear is pretty nice. I like to wear the chaps with no pants so I can feel the breeze on my ass. I get 50% from the MIA vendors, which is pretty generous. Go shop and help me pay for all this crap. I also have a Dictator shop which has good animations for the kinkier folks, and Neolove/Sexgen vendor, because it's a name pretty much everyone knows. I'm putting in more stuff all the time. The rest of the stores are available to rent.


I'm going to have at least 2 stores of my own. One featuring dirty offensive T-Shirts I'm branding "That OTHER Hoorenbeek". My other brand is going to called On Second Thought Builds and is just random stuff I make because I couldn't find anything to buy that was exactly what I wanted. Gadgets, buildings, maybe some furniture, who knows. I'm learning to script ya'll! About damn time.

The apartment tower, pool and fountain have been completely redone. There are some elements that resemble the old build, but trust me, every prim has been retextured, resized and relocated if not flat out replaced. This tower is based very loosely on a prefab I bought and tore apart. It's all megas now, and the build is all mine. 16 one bedroom apartments and two double size penthouses on the top. The shopping mall is built in the same basic style.


























Ammenites include (yes I'm pasting from the parcel description because I'm getting tired of typing):

Access to gay clubs, extreme sex steamroom, playroom, orgy pit, swiming pool, jacuzzi, beach, sailing and jetski. Metacard accepted.

























Finally, there are 10 beach houses on individual parcels so you can control the media. The rear deck of the one story house is shown below. The houses have a color change script, but there are only a couple of colors that look decent. Currenly half are white or plain and half are charcoal (black). Pink and brown are not so bad and green.. eh.. maybe. I'm just not having any flaming day glow red houses.

Here's a shot of the back deck of one of the beach houses on the Timbuktu "strand". I'm keeping a boy stashed there ATM. That's him in the tightie whities and tube socks.
We're having a Risky Business party next Wednesday night to celebrate his RL birthday. This will be the first event since we closed for "repairs" in February. If you're reading this, you'll probably get an invite. If you want to be sure, join my newly resurrected group called Timbuktu or just ask me. The Sodom group is still there, but is being repurposed, if that's a word.

Here's a link to the new group. Unfortunately, due to some LL fuckery, you can't get to the group in world anymore by clicking the button on the page, so you have to paste it into local chat or just search groups for Timbuktu. The button now only works with the built-in browser, as if somebody actually uses it.

That's it for now. More to follow soon.

Here are some SLURL links (TY Jordyn) in case you want to have a look around the place. It's all connected with teleporters. As far as I know SLURLs still work.

Main Lobby
Club Orbit
Sodom Island
Club Timbuktu
Gamorrah Mall