If you like Michael Moore, try listening to Democracy Now on the radio. Amy Goodman loves Michael Moore and I am sure you would love her show. Its also nice because she is really a leader within the progressive community and she is a woman. That seems to be rare, even in the land of the free, home of the brave.

In San Diego you don't even need the internet to listen to it. It is on Free Radio 96.9 FM in San Diego, twice a day from 6am-8am and 3pm-5pm. Although you still can download streaming MP3s from the site if you want to listen to it at other time. The site also has lots of information about current issues.

I think Bush really does need to be challenged on this AWOL issue. How can he send so many of our youth away to fight when he didn't even go himself? Especially for a war that wasn't really defensive. I mean, it would be one thing if foreign troops were invading and a President with no military service sent soldiers to protect. But this war wasn't like that - not even sort of.

If President Bush knew the horrors of war first hand, he would have thought twice about Iraq. Well, I guess at this point we can just be vocal and vote when it comes time for a new president.

We ate Sushi and sashimi at Kuni's. I was treally ecited to go and the food was quite tasty. The price was also reaosnable. We ordered a large Sashimi plate which had lots of tasties from ocean.



My only problem was the ginger. The ginger was chock full of aspartame and I didn't realize till I ate a lot of it at the end of the meal. Right now I can only taste aspartame which is my leats favorite flavor in the whole world.



God, make the chemical sweetness end . . .

So thanks to all my super friends and aquaintences, my birthday is turning out to be quite rad after all. I hope to see you all at the party tomorrow. Its also nice to see more new names on the site list!

On another note, today I got to see some more VR art projects and I am starting to really think it has potential to be something exciting.

Josephine, also cleared up guilty feelings I was having about particpating in art that is not politically based. I really am thinking that working with her could change my life and make me happier.

I had been starting to get stuck in an anti-school funk. Not hat I don't think politically/socially pogressive art is important. After all I dedicate most of my hours to that kind of work. I just always secretly wanted to also work with 3D and VR. After all, its the reason I went to UB in the first place but get swept into a certain unnamed person's world who directed me in a way I really didn't want to go. So I decided for my 27th year I am no longer going to feel guilty about that.

Its my birthday right now. Where is Terry? At the essex with his friends. Where is Mattew, in a bad mood in his room.

This is going to be fun. Time for homework.

This is an excerpt from my Second Life journal that I thought some of you might find interesting. You can continue to read my Second Life journal in the future by clicking on the "My 2nd Life Journal" link in the link list.

I developed the temp:real journal site using the code I wrote for this (e:strip) site. It is nice to re-purpose your projects.



The most important discovery of the evening was that with the new 1.2.8 version of Second Life, the female sitting position has changed to something that looks more submissive and "feminine." This has outraged some female characters to the point of protest, as you can see in the picture above. Her sign says, "support animation choice." She is also wearing a shirt that says, "I don't sit like that."

I think this is fantastic, however, this is not the first protest I have witnessed in Second Life. Previously, avatars got together to protest the taxation system, which subsequently changed for the better to include things such as group land, and public good projects which spread tax liability throughout a group instead of just on the modeler.

Along the same lines as the new female sitting position, I have heard people starting to complain about the fact that male avatars cannot do female animations and vice-versa. This is a serious point of contention for some people. While, I can completely support the fact that some people want to be a male avatar doing female animations, I have to give Second Life credit for at least making a Gender Change operation so simple. Simple click on the gender of your choice in the appearance update page.

This is radically different from There.com where you are stuck with the gender you picked at the onset of your sign up and where a male avatar cannot even wear a female model's cowboy hat. I know this because I tried to buy a cowboy hat which looked completely genderless to me only to find out that the system would not let me purchase it due to the fact that I had a male avatar and that it was a female cowboy hat.

Also Second Life gives you the choice to have a gender neutral existence. For example, my new happy face or the the ice-cream cone I once was.

But anyways, I still uphold the idea that animation choice is important. At the end of the evening I could not help but feel that I was in a weird place, even for Second Life. It became exceptionally obvious when Jesus showed up selling Soviet sickle and hammer staffs for a dollar. Read whatever you want into that.