Dec.28,2007

Everything was decaying peacefully at the dumpster site, the “prim limit” was almost reached, pictures were taken…



so Lothar Apfelbaum decided to take a break and teleport to a Freebie warehouse in order to document, where a lot of trash on the dumpster is actually coming from.



As many other warehouses offering boxes filled with free stuff, the one Lothar arrived at via the sorting order of the “freebie” listings, looked very big, sterile and well sorted in it's crystal clear neon light. There were many rows of identical looking boxes on the floor and a grid of similar looking advertisement pictures on the walls.



Lothar decided that before “documenting” (collecting pictures), he should check if there was any organic matter such as plants or trees that he could get to “green” the dumpster, and entice worms and bacteria to start “composting”. But before he could orient himself, an almost naked avatar named Shooter Wisent positioned himself in front of Lothar.



[12:44] Shooter Wisent: Wow Lothar, you are about as ugly as me
[12:44] Geija Barbosa: lol
[12:44] Lothar Apfelbaum: excuse me?
[12:44] Shooter Wisent: you are almost as ugly as me, maybe even worse

Lothar felt caught, because just before he had left the dumpster he had looked around in his “free hats” box and tried on the exact same brown cowboy hat Shooter Wisent was sporting. He had actually kind of liked it, but then decided it looked as good or bad as the black and white Zebra one, which he had pulled out last. What did that mean?
Shooter Wisent seemed to await some kind of response, while Lothar tried to assemble a constructive answer that wasn't too personal.
It was not the first time, that he had been called “ugly”. Until now he had shrugged it off as an evaluation that came from a corner in the world, in which avatars did not see the “the equalization of beauty and ugliness in Second Life” yet. But now, since even completely unrelated bystanders, like Geija Barbosa started to “laugh out loud” about stupid comments regarding his appearance, Lothar felt it was time to talk about artificial fakes and copied artificiality and why for him one fake was not better than another fake and therefore naturally should be evaluated outside the conventions of “pretty and/or generally unpleasant”. The beauty of the simulation was not to be found in the simulation itself.
Lothar looked at Shooter Wisent, but the way Shooter stuck his tongue out made Lothar unsure sure if this was the moment to talk about such things.
So instead, Lothar turned around and walked away from Shooter to bump right into KrystalKid Nightfire, who was in the process of giving a life demonstration of the different options that must have been an element of the “Sex Parts” box next to him.



Another example. Lothar walked around the “add-on, take-off penis show” and took “pictures of evidence”, until Shooter Wisent bumped into him from the back to announce: I am starting to hate this SL thing.


Here he was again. Ugly Shooter had a point. And he probably knew where the freebie box with the machine guns was. And because Lothar was fat and slow, and now very self-conscious and depressed about his looks and what he was looking at, he probably would volunteer as a practice target for Shooter Wisent's first amok run in the Freebie Mall, if Shooter would agree to videotape it. But then, there was no blood in him. No heart. He would not splatter nor splash. Shooter would be disappointed again, and Lothar did not want to be the one who did it.
“Sorry”, Lothar thought and escaped back to the dumpster, where everything was decaying peacefully.
No one seemed to be around. He felt relieved.
The mushrooms looked especially cool. One more day and they would be completely gone. Two more days and everything that was currently on the dumpster would disappear, maybe replaced by new stuff… but maybe not.
Why had that Shooter Wisent had called him ugly?
Lothar Apfelbaum could skinny himself within a second. Edit appearance, go to body, go to body fat, slide to the triangle to the left, done! So why would anybody care?
Lothar Apfelbaum decided to go back and investigate. As a different Lothar of course. One that would not be immediately commented on by avatars like Shooter Wisent.
Lothar detached his farmer's skirt, and went through his inventory. He found some black leather gloves and a metal helmet and stuck a big, puffing cigar into his mouth, that was surrounded by a beard in which every hair had the potential to symbolize another valuable Second Life lesson Lothar had learned.



He found a backpack, put another smoking cigar in it, and teleported back to the warehouse.



Shooter wasn't there anymore. The penis show was over. No one greeted him, no one insulted him, no one approached him, no one was running away when he arrived. Everybody was doing their thing…



…walking from box to box, exchanging tips of where to find the good stuff, loading the content of the boxes into their inventory, flying up and down the walls to collect new eyes, jewelry, hairstyles, breasts, shoes, tatoos, sex poses, furniture, handbags, T-Shirts, piercings, earrings, bracelets, belts, hats, etc. Everyone just acted very normal.
Lothar tried to do the same. High heels, high heels, higher heels, high heels, really high heels, high heels. Gold rings, silver rings, iron rings, platinum plastic rings with perfect diamonds. After looking at the displays for a little while, he felt like trying an experiment.


He took another puff from his cigar and started to pretended that Lothar wasn't Lothar the dumpster diver, who would collect stuff for the sole purpose of bringing it to the garbage pit, where he would take apart the stuff and attach the decay script to it. He tried to look at the stuff on display with different eyes. What would he like to wear tonight? The blue skirt, the red skirt? Yes, the red, no? Red, blue? Black? Ok blue then…. The experiment failed. He couldn't pretend to pretend to pretend to pretend to pretend, that there was a difference between the red and the blue skirt. He was already pretending to be Lothar.



Still, he was wondering… How did the other avatars decide what they wanted, and for what purpose? What did they do once they were dressed. Did it make a difference how they were dressed? If, why was everybody dressed similar?



Lothar looked around.



Lothar focused on what the others were looking at.



He watched, how they extended their arms straight forward until a line of white blinking dots connected their hand of stilted fingers with what they wanted and probably needed. May be desired. May be just took for the hell of it, because it was for free, for fun, for nothing, for whatever, for going to the club, for going to the beach, for going to the bar, for going to the party.


As more he looked, as more he became fascinated… almost in the same way he had become fascinated with trash earlier. There were special details that seemed to make a difference.



He lost his shyness and got really close into avatar's faces.



He got inspired and took a lot of pictures.



He walked through their bodies. He flew around them, above their head, under their skirts, asked if he could become their “Lothar handbag” so that they could carry him around and let him see with their eyes.



“Can I be your backpack then? Your umbrella? Your panda bear?”



He realized that there were two kinds of avatars. The ones that wore their hair as one stiff piece of sculpture, and the one's who's hair was moving like angel wings in a cloud or seaweed in the ocean.





Lothar thought of opening a “wig” store. He would have a sulfur-crested cockatoo with a motion sensor sitting right next to the entrance door. Whenever someone would enter, the bird would yell: “What's the difference between a real hairstyle and a wig?”





Then he spotted an avatar, who stood in the middle of the freebie place. The guy looked a little bit more “real” then the rest. Like a real guy, he smoked a cigarette and ashed on the floor. That's all he was doing. Lothar wanted to become his friend immediately, but wasn't sure, if the green grasshopper on top of the leather jacket shoulder would be into things like “trash pile jumping at the dump”.


Silently Lothar counted until 10. That should give the guy enough time to do a “search and profile check” on him. Just in case…



Then he blew another positive cloud of appreciation smoke into the air and left.


read about the next trip here: Jan.8, 2007