Lovebirds

Ever since Pinky and Skye did the deed earlier today, I've noticed a change in them. After Skye was 'with egg' Iss separated them, putting her back with the other hens and the chicks while putting Pinky in the pen next to them.

Only they've both spend every moment since virtually glued to the fence, gazing through the links at each other, making googoo eyes and such stuff. I would move Pinky further away but the last thing I need is a couple of delinquent teen runaways to track down.

Tell me if I'm boring you, won't you?

Huggles

I love the way our birdfolk gather together to sleep at night. Come on, look me in the eye and tell me it's not adorable. You can't, can you?


The latest addition to the McFamily was hatched today. McKenzie is the spawn of Pinky and Skye and is the first chicken my personal brood have caused (Sparky was begotten of Duke and Marmalade, two of Iss's chickens, while MacGregor and McDonald came from eggs Iss bought for me).

Iss has told me that that will do for now, that we have enough. Do you know how hard it is to not hatch eggs that are currently sat in your inventory, or to not pair up chickens that have been eyeing each other up through the wire fencing? It's bloody hard, I can tell you. I was even tempted to leave the inner coop doors open last night so that Duke could wander over to say hi to Marmalade and Cupcake. But I didn't.

It's Cupcake I feel sorry for. She's there, the innocent little virgin amongst our original hens, while Marmalade and Skye, sit in the corner and look experienced and talk about grown-up things.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

As mentioned earlier, while I was away, Iss and our landlords moved home. So I came home from Foreign to a new place to rest my weary SL feet.

And this time, we weren't plonked up in the air on a big slab of chocolate. Now, don't get me wrong, living on a big slab of chocolate is not a problem really. But it does lead to a lot of mucky footprints all through the house, and Buckley was beginning to look a bit portly.

So yeah, our new house. I had expected that our old house would just have been relocated, but no, I got a surprise. Iss had decided to go with a building more suitable for our location. A beachfront section demands a beachfront property. And this is what she duly provided for us.


Personally, I really quite like it. I like the airy feeling with lots of outdoor spaces to sit and watch the waves lap around our toes as the clouds meander by. I do think that perhaps we need a barbecue on that front deck though.

And as for the pooch, like any lab he loves running in and out of the waves.

This how you do it

I have been reading recently about Meara Deschanel's exploits in chicken farming. Today she most kindly agreed to give me a tour of her facility. And believe me, it is a facility.


She's got this whole big barn thing going on (which looks wonderful, btw) with areas for hens and mating pairs and rare chickens and all sorts. And she's got a skybox for baby roosters not yet of mating age. And another skybox filled with chicks.

I was really quite overwhelmed. It's an awesome project. I won't give a slurl for it, because it's her private farm, and that's not my place to do that. If you want a tour, then you'll have to ask her nicely yourself. Just don't bug her about it. Or I'll get in trouble. But you can tell her I said nice things.

Thank you, Meara, for the tour, and for answering all my chick-noob questions :)

The circle of life

As one little chick is taken away from us, so another takes his first breath of life as the egg cracks open.


Marmalade's egg hatched and Iss named the little fella Sparky.

And after the disaster with my first egg I decided to try again. Twice, to make sure. Meet my girl chick McDonald, and my boy chick MacGregor.


So now we have Duke and Pinky, the roosters; Cupcake, Skye and Marmalade, the hens; and Sparky, MacGregor and McDonald, the baby chicks. Iss told me that that's enough for now. Did I mention I'm a bit of an obsessive though? Oops. I promised her just one more for now. I haven't had my rooster, Pinky, be responsible for an egg. And I think he deserves it. So he's currently in with Skye. He doesn't seem interested at the moment. I do hope the name isn't a reflection of his orientation, so to speak...


Oh, here's a question I'd not thought of before - do the hen and the rooster have to be owned by the same person? I'd not thought of that. If so that might present a problem. Skye is owned by Iss. For now. Hehe...

A time to mourn

"I ("unnamed") died because of genetic errors!"

What a terribly sad email to receive first thing when you wake up in a morning. I guess my little egg didn't hatch :(

Was it me? Did I do something wrong? Was my egg too close to Marmalade's? Was it just natural selection?

So many questions. So few answers.

I'll be over here, in this corner, just sitting for a while.

It begins

OK, so I am about six weeks late entering the craze, but I finally got here. And if you've been reading you'll have seen why I was so delayed in grabbing the tailfeathers of the passing band-chicken.

I expected on arriving home and finally getting inworld that I would have to begin from scratch. I have been following various and numerous chicken sagas in blogs and thought I had everything all in place to go and get what I needed. But wait, I arrived home (to our new home, but more about that later) to find a wonderful surprise. Iss had been busy.


There was a rooster coop, and fenched area for hens, and five little chickens - Marmalade, Cupcake and Skye (the hens) and Duke and Pinky (the roosters). She wanted us to have a chicken family already on the go for when I arrived home.

They are all quite young but in the last day or so had reached maturity and Duke, I hear, had been giving Marmalade the glad-eye. She'd resolutely kept her legs crossed though, awaiting my return, it seems.

And I didn't have to wait long. Within five minutes or TP-ing to our new house, she suddenly had an egg %. Duke had done the deed. Iss and I sat there for a bit, explored the new house for a bit, and sat there for a bit. And slowly the egg % crept up and up. Until finally, we had our first egg...


Marmalade is going to be our first mummy hen.

Along with a few other cool welcome home presents from Iss (how lovely is she, eh?) I had a box full of chicken stuff - egg protector things, chicken crates, a bunch of LMs and also some eggs for me.

We put out Marmalade's egg to hatch, along with one of mine. But then jetlag caught up with me and I had to log. The anticipation of logging on today is killing me.

The gallery

So I finally got inworld last night. And the first thing I did was head on over to Ghambt. I just had to check out the exhibition.

I feel so proud to have been part of this. All credit must go to incredible Tym for doing all of the legwork, but it is amazing how a simple blogpost has grown and grown. It was quite overwhelming to see the final results, all there in peachy spendour.


If you've not been yet, please go and look around. It is so much more than just a collection of buttpics. For me the whole art revolves around the participation, the way so many people thought it all through, decided on a pose, a location, post-photo effects etc. The art is about the collection of the process in one place, as much as about the photos. But that's just me. And I'm not an expert or anything.

It is in some small way my SLegacy. If I go and never return, I can at least say, in part, I did this.

Thank you, Tymmerie. Thank you, all of you.

Capped, f'sure

I didn't make it inworld last night. I fell asleep instead. That's jetlag for ya.

Maybe tonight.

Wanderer returns

I am back. Did ya miss me?

As my return edged ever closer I found myself craving with ever increasing vigour the double click on the SL icon on m desktop. And now it is almost here, I sit here, nervous with anticipation.

It seems I have moved again, or at least have been moved. More details when I have them. I have been promising myself a trip to a clothes shop I can't quite remember the name of. I am finally going to enter the world of the chicken, about six weeks after everyone else. And of course, there's Iss to catch up with.

I missed the BBBC thingy while I was away, which was a little careless as that would have been right up my street.

It's going to be weird logging on during the day. Some people I know might actually be around for a change.

Out of this world

You may have picked up on here, or plurk if you're that way inclined, that RL is taking me away from SL for a while. So don't panic or raise the alarm or call out the national guard and sniffer dogs. The absence is entirely expected and is going to be a pleasant experience, if a little tiring.

It won't mean I won't miss you though.

We call it home

I keep forgetting to tell you all, our homelessness has been solved. It looks like we might have a place to call home, thanks for a good friend of Iss's.

At the moment it's a giant slab of chocolate but it'll hold our house, and the rent's cheap so it works for me.

The outstanding question though, is how do I prevent the chickens from plunging to a gravitorial end as they lemming and then splash?

A fowl future

According to Nika I am about to head over to the dark side. I would object, but I can't, because she's right.

I have been following the worldwide chicken extravaganza with the excited eyes of a five-year old on Christmas eve. The imminent promise of what's to come. Ever since I first heard about them, and as I've mentioned before, I have found them hard to resist. I see my future filled with squawking yellow fuzzballs and bowls of expensive food.

Up till now I have put off the inevitable because I'm just about to leave these SLhores for a few weeks and I felt it would be irresponsible of me to hatch some eggs only to leave the chicks to die a lonely death of starvation, their only consolation the feeble croaks of their dying brothers and sisters.

But, on my return, prepare yourselves for the tiny patter of wrinkly red feet. The chicks are coming.

I just hope I can trust Iss not to 'accidentally' damage them...

Posework

Iss and I had some fun playing around with poses this afternoon. I hope you like the results.

Creating a monster

I've been amazed in the last two days. Amazed in two ways.

Firstly, I've been amazed quite how widespread the NBTBP meme thing has become. I've managed to track down just short of 30 responses, I think, if you included plurk as well as the blogs, in just two short days. This blog took 100 unique hits in a day aswell when the most I'd managed before was about 20. It seems nekkid but tasteful butt pics are popular. Who'd have thunk it?

Secondly, I've been amazed by the different reactions it's had in different people. Some people have not had a second thought about posting pics. Some had to take pics especially while some just had buttpics lying around. But people in this group had no reservations or hesitation at all.

Then there are another group who were reluctant at first but then gradually weakened and posted, either just a softening stance or due to peer pressure. Yay for softening stances!

And then a third group stated their reluctance and stood their ground. No way, Jose!

I don't know to what degree the make-up of the different groups reflects RL personalities and to what degree it reflects that combined with our association with our avatars. But it is clear that perhaps some people just dissociate with their avs more. Their pixel butts are no more than that. But for others, those pixels are more closely linked to their actual bodies and they'd never expose something in public in SL that the'd not expose in RL.

I think it's maybe different for everyone. Why they participate in this or they don't. And in no way should we judge anyone for their decision, of course. But one thing I have loved in the last couple of days, and this is purely due to the make-up of this community I think, is the need to blog about the decisions made and the thoughts processes surrounding it all.

Finally, in this post, the lovely Tymmerie Thorne has had the wonderful idea of turning all of these pics into an art installation. And I for one think this is a wonderful idea. Due to various reasons she's volunteered to do all the legwork that I'm unable to do but before we just go about nicking people's pictures we thought we'd want to get permission from contributors that they're ok with their buttpics being displayed. So, if you've participated in the meme please comment on this post with a link to the post/pic and affirmation of permission. Or you can IM Tymmerie inworld.

It's going to be a world of 'nekkid but tasteful butt pics'. Who could want for more?