GRAY

I won't show pictures because your mind can already assemble the shards. GRAY is what is seen before textures "properly" load in Second Life. Used to be a translucent, amorphous mesh of blobs—now, we've got gray, opaquely Tronnish panels with white outlines. But nevertheless, the GRAY. Gray which could mean, lifeless, in the middle, ambivalence, has-yet-to-take-shape-and-form, or any one of a number of other word association snippets. Markedly, definitively: the GRAY.

It might seem like reversion, if our loading texture was rainbow, and what rezzed in was, infact, GRAY. Or as my favorite, the watermelon that calls me dear. For to have something uniform as a placeholder is not only applicably predictable, but practical, uniform to a X. Like the gray with black X on a devoid profile piccie. Check up a new Resi, look at their profile. Look at the X. Look for ratings (probably 0), and what they have yet to fill in, the story of their Second Lives to be lived.

And if I could replace the loading texture, I might, perchance on a whim, choose to make it a static pattern—a dynamic static one, much as how "when nothing's on" a TV is never such a dull din, but a comb-filtering of a salt and pepper silkscreen, auto contrast applied to remarkable ends. A snow crash. Even so much as a test pattern would do this good, pixellated clock counting upwards, color bars the prison of the active imagination, with one, ominous hi-pitched tone like the domino effect of so many discreet beeps, sliding us into the following sequence du jour.

My biological father used to mute and/or simply turn off the television when I fell asleep next to it, which I did, many times. Somewhere enroute to the eleemosynary berth of sleep, I would hear the Canadian national anthem, all stretched out and druggy, some kinda vapor trail like that moment where you dip your feet into summer's waters and aren't quite sure if you want to immerse yourself fully into the drink, or stay at the shore. But tugged into Hypnos's domain, the mind doesn't censor.

This ended up being one of my New Year's resolutions: when awake, to be more like when I am asleep. In embracing this contradiction, I, too (in addition to all who have come before), now more competently realize the suggestive tug of screensavers from the software graveyard of yesteryears past. For I had a dream, staring into the ripple water, of blissful satoris and geometric weave patterns, appreciating this visualization art for what it is: when I am dreaming fully awake.

An amusing cap to this is, just several days ago, ripple water did undergo some aesthetic changes. Runitai Linden will be changing it back because many Resis declared the current appearance to be unnatural. And I thot to myself, "What good can come out of this?" As I went on a 50-island tour, it quickly dawned on me: alien landscapes will need alien aqua. To rise out of such oily, reflective goo, like an androgynous lifeform from an Amiga tech demo's bastard child.

Immediately, there's a contrast: the saturated, luxury car paint-tones of the sky gradient (perhaps even approaching the glare in Don Johnson's Miami Vice glasses), coupled with the crimson-streaked entanglement of the pooling alien aqua viva the 2nd below; vs. the GRAY.

One doesn't believe otherwise there's progress to be made.

And on an endnote, if you're wondering why I'm writing for SLOG... first, let me get it out of the way that "favoritism" is a cockeyed term that braying donkeys use when they can't get any jackass. Second, please give me the car keys and I'll drive my watermelonmobile over and happily write for your group blog too. My only three open conditions are that it/I must be 1) Fun, 2) Friendly, and 3) Fantastical. I wouldn't be me without being me.