There’s only one absolutely safe way to attend church these days, and that’s in a virtual cathedral, of which we have several.
I have one working in the virtual ashram, but there’s a Godd™ Orb that you can get that has a cathedral space — as a matter of fact, you can get the Heaven version, which has a chorus of angels all around, from lower to higher choirs.
The online experience is slightly easier to manage in the ashram, because it doesn’t require a download or skills at online hookups.
As a matter of fact, in Second Life, the less you know, the better, in general. It’s build for total dum-dums like you and me. The smarter ones have to go to the back of the line.
So what can you do to make a living when you’re stuffed into a box?
To begin with, you’re not trapped and you’re not alone. You need to establish that fact in your overly taxed brain before going any further, so get into the ashram and find someone to talk to.
If you can’t find anyone to talk to, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. If you run into me, for instance, I won’t respond, because I’m typically busy doing something intricate and delicate in there, and need to concentrate on what I’m trying to do.
If you’re stuck at home and you’re already sitting at a keyboard, why not write a book and get it onto the market, like we did? You’ll see the names up there — Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison, Paul Krassner and Timothy Leary, John C. Lilly and Ted Sturgeon — we were at the top of the heap.
Heap is the right word for it. You don’t want to be there for long — it’s an endless parade of talk shows and personal appearances at supermarket openings.
Still, books do make money, and if you can market it with social media, you’ll do all right — depending on bookstores is SO 20th century!
Even if you can’t do personal appearances in person, you can do them in virtual, and that’s what I recommend — have your book signings online in the ashram!
Everyone who attends gets sent an autograph which, upon receipt, can be wiped, cleaned or burned.
Myself, I burn every post-it that comes to my desk.
This is a predictive Oracle Orb that I created over a period of three nights of level writing, and then never released.
Why not?
Because I had other fish to fry, and it seemed as if it might be an overload on our already overtaxed marketing department, which at that time was me.
That’s no longer the case, and I appreciate it.
If you’d take the time and trouble to help me exploit the system, I’d double my appreciation, and the easiest and best way you can do that is to master social media in a big way and apply it to the Work.
Let’s continue examining your prospects while locked up and living in a box.
First of all, what’s in the box with you? Do you have all the tools you’ll need? If you’re programming game levels, do you have the skills and the editing apparatus?
By the way, if you DO happen to be programming game levels, you need to ask the magical question, “WHY?” before going any further.
Dance movements are a very popular activity, and you might find yourself teaching someone how to perform the movments in the virtual ashram.
It’s not hard, but it sure helps to have someone talk you through it.
The other kind of dancing, social dancing, is also of course possible here, and I encourage folks to explore the various forms of dance movement in Second Life — notably the MOCAP animations that I have recommended.
Some of the cha-cha and ballet dances are profoundly realistic, and so are the more exotic dance steps.
MOCAP means “motion-capture” and what happens is that actual dancers do the movements and this is captured by the computer, which then drives your Avatar accordingly.
It’s amazing how good this looks, and performances are easy to give, and audiences in our ashram tend to be largish — you can make your character applaud, laugh, and otherwise react to performances.
As long as you’re just sitting on your ass anyway, why not embark on a Great Journey, like being not only a Level 99, but the FIRST Level 99 to make it to the top of the Ladder List, as you’ll see Gorebagg in the screenshot above.
It took eight months to get there, and I beat StayUpWind and IIULSCRII by only a few hours.
What good does it do? How can you use this experience? Well, there’s no DIRECT way to profit from the effort, but there are side-benefits, not the least of which is humility.
Believe me, you can’t accomplish Level 99 alone.
Learning to cooperate with others means that they benefit, too, not just you. Working that out takes time, attention and mercy.
Yeah, mercy. You have to allow others to fail, just as you did, on your own way to mastery.
November of 2013 was when I opened my first Fashion Shop in Second Life. I discovered that you can design clothing from the most basic shapes, simulate fabrics and draping effects, and create shadow patterns, and much, much more.
The carryover from the fashion world into the virtual world is astonishingly effective, and actually is more believable and tactile than flight simulation, which is pretty damn good all by itself.
The dress I’m both wearing and modeling on the delivery box in Second Life was created by me in mesh format, an easy task for me. The Textures are from my little “textures” bag of tricks, a file of fabric designs that goes back to my high school days when I made them in my Home Room notebook.
These days, what with home schooling and remote learning, there’s no reason to hide my sketchbooks anymore, and at the age of 78, I’m somewhat free to do as I please.
I designed this “Roadkill Cafe — Walk-Ins Welcome” in Second Life, but it’s too prim-rich to keep up without compression, so I closed it, instead favoring Michele de Paris’ little pizza hut over by the Temple.
She could actually operate that pizza hut at certain hours, and make some actual cash money from the tips and donations received via her tip jar placed on the countertop.
You can cash in Lindens and convert it over to PayPal very easily, and you only have to do it once — you can unload your e-money whenever you like, or spend it in the marketplace.
I spend something on the order of $800 in U.S. funds buying up a few hundred EXCLUSIVE FULL-PERM outfits, and I control how many of them are produced in total, so of course, I have control of the price.
In other cases, I bought mesh models that were untextured and put my own textures on them, and those same textures went on products in zazzle and redbubble and cafepress, and these same textures are also useful in my Godd™ Levels, so how about them apples, eh?
I handmade every single item you see in the picture, plus dozens more, with which I filled up the shelves and tabletops. Salt shakers, pepper shakers, sugar shakers and ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles all work, actually work, meaning that your Avatar apparently consumes the stuff, or at least the hand is empty after the cupcake or donut has been consumed, and that’s another point.
No calories.
When I say that a thing is non-fattening no matter how overdressed it is with butterfat and sugar byproducts, you can take that to the horses.
What I mean is, you can eat yourself into a glut and feel nothing, pay no price, experience no bellyaches, no pains, no heartbreak of psoriasis.
As a matter of fact, there isn’t a medical condition that can’t be caused and cured in Second Life, and that includes a bellyache from overeating, I suppose, but I haven’t invested in the overeating aspects of virtual food, at least not yet.
There’s still plenty more there to amuse and astound.
Another thing you’ll notice is that you’re neither bored nor lonely, because there’s ALWAYS something to do in Prosperity Path Virtual Ashram, and there’s ALWAYS some company around or as near as a message or phone call — I often meet with folks in the ashram if we’re working on some aspect of virtual ashram life, and we always are — there are so many potentials, and we’ve explored just a few so far.
I’m hoping that you will come up with some plans, also, to take up the awful slack, and burn some time before dawn, but that’s life in a box — no matter what else, you’re always still in the box.
In January of 2014, I opened my virtual bathing and swimsuit shop in the Second Life marketplace, and sold out of my bikinis in a couple of days.
I limit my production generally to 10, and that’s a good number to make back what I have in the raw model plus a little extra to get something to expand the line.
What can you do with a bikini?
My first thought was that I’d run out of ideas within the first hour, but that’s not at all the case — actually, I have dozens of styles of bikinis, and they really do look different and have different visual effects.
My favorit is actually the one you see in the screenshot above — the ship, by the way, has actual operating cannons aboard, with which you can destroy an entire village, but nobody gets hurt, not even the village goat.
I have a wide variety of Avatars, giving me a very large number of models, because it’s not just the clothing — the entire body is changeable in just a few moments.
Yep, I’ve even got “Marilyn” here, to pose for me if I want that Monroe look and style. She is realistic enough to fool the naked eye, unless you know you’re looking at a model. Of course, in a closeup like this, the illusion is somewhat whacked away.
The jewelry is changeable, and you could open up a jewelry store in the marketplace, doubled by a virtual in-game store in Second Life, where clients can try things on and carry on a conversation, such as getting a bargain price because they came there to the shop.
I always offer incentives to get interaction — the whole POINT is interaction, not the money. There are a million great ways to earn money in a depression and even while holed up in your home as you hunker down and take cover.
Your Avatar is capable of looking like anyone, so if you’re into meeting people in Second Life and giving them some sort of therapeutic session, remember that it’s all part of online gaming, and you might find yourself with a “Sigmund Freud” Avatar or perhaps you’ll select something like “Father O’Donahan” or your BFF’s Unique Avatar comes into the space and you unload on her.
If the Avatar is not unique, you never know on whom you’re unloading, and it could appear on facebook tomorrow, if they’ve got a FRAPS videomaker system running in the background.
Never say or do anything that you’d regret seeing on facebook or youtube, because like it or not, it will show up there, even if you didn’t participate and it’s not really you.
This is the world of Deep Fake, and don’t you forget it — especially when you’re making financial deals.
This is an example of just one of my in-game shops. You can buy things just by clicking on the image on the box.
You get the opportunity to pay in Lindens — tiny fractions of a cent — and sometimes things run high, like 35,000 Lindens for a Roman bath or Colosseum, which can run into serious money.
That opens the potential to make a LOT more than just a few pennies, and I want to encourage you to do so.
That means you’ll have to think outside the box and inside the box at the same time.
What kind of stuff would someone want, if they live in a box and can’t leave?
What kind of stuff can they AFFORD, if they’re stuck inside a box?
That’s not such a bad thought, if you’re doing game design. I’ll explain with an example that I made back in January-February of 2014:
This was one idea — a piece of fabric associated with a “sportscard” style enclosure, printed in color from my own artwork.
Well, this could have worked. I never pursued it, but the idea of bench-warmer cards carried over into Puja-warmers appealed to my sense of iniquity and bad taste.
This character is one of my favorite models in Second Life, and I’ve designed quite a few numbers with her help.
There is a definite set of skills that goes into dress design in general, and Second Life dress design in particular.
Nobody said it was easy, and it isn’t. It just isn’t, and there’s no way to make it easy, but if you follow the simple step-by-step instructions, you’ll be lost in no time.
I don’t recommend any digital design for anyone without the skills already there — too many years of backwork getting ready to actually create something.
It’s almost impossible. Why make it harder?
This was one “number” from my Nile Style group — do you like it? Think about it, answer the question, “Would you actually buy and wear a real-life version of this dress”???
If the answer is “Yes”, then we’ve established that you could design dresses for nearly nothing, show them on live models in Second Life or photo them and sell them to dressmakers or sell them as patterns or precuts.
Look, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you could design a thousand dresses for less cost than building a single handmade sample.
That’s my point. Not only can you learn to design, you can sell from your designs, and I mean this quite literally.
All my zazzle clothing is made this way, and I get real-world results.
Best part is, no contact, yet plenty of connection. Get it?
Gosh, that Marilyn — she sure does an outfit proud. Would you like this delivered to your door in your choice of fabrics? I actually have them available, but if you’re trapped inside a room box somewhere in Philadelphia or Buenos Aires, I have to ask if you have a pool nearby.
Heated pools are the only kind I could ever swim in, although I appreciate your oddly-shaped pools and rock decor around the patio.
So I made dozens of variations of this shorts-and-top, and all of them can be delivered in actual wearable clothing, mostly off zazzle and some you’ll find on printalloverme and other sites where I get my clothing made.
God, I don’t do them myself, nor do I wander about town seeking a young maiden to do my sewing.
Frankly, I can cut a pattern and perform just about any action on a Singer you can ask for, because my grandpa was a popular and successful dress manufacturer (Evie Porter Fashions) with the same two partners for over 50 years.
Fifty years of partnership means a lot of trust, and trust is built only over time. These guys loved each other, and each brought something to the table — one was an accountant, one was a pattern-maker and cutter, and my grandpa was the salesman.
Imagine what their lives would be like today, how they would have to entirely disrupt their operation and retool and rethink and reinvent themselves, in a world where there are no runway shows, no modeling agencies, no group events, not ever.
And where are you going to WEAR these fabulous fashions? Who’s going to see you, in a radical bikini bathing suit standing around in front of your keyboard and monitor?
Remember when it was like this?
It isn’t now, and it won’t be, ever again, not quite like what you see in this 1972 “Love-In” vintage photo.
So what happens with fashion, now that crowds are a thing of the past?
We’ll find out in the very next chapter, so hold onto your toes!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby