Rubber Bubbly Baby Bunkers OR Come See Virtual Me Hover

For a short period of time today, I bummed a laptop off of my friend Chris. I thought, instead of sending a text or email, that I’d sign on to Second Life and see if my honey was playing in the alternate universe.

(In case you’ve never played, it’s an online game where you create your own character and walk around doing whatever the hell you want to. We both discovered it after it was featured on an episode of The Office. We actually look like ourselves.)

Anywho, I signed on, searched for her, discovered she wasn’t there, and decided to take a snapshot of myself before I signed off. (You can take online “pictures” of yourself in the game. Jesus God. A pretend world where you create an online version of yourself and then take photographs of yourself hanging out there.)

I noticed a podium on a small stage and decided I’d sit on it. I pressed the “sit here” button. Instead of sitting on the podium I’d pointed at, the game had me sitting about 5 virtual feet up in the air. For about 5 minutes I sat there. Someone else in the real world, from who knows where, walked onto the stage and walked around me the whole time. Probably wondering “why and how is this guy hovering in mid-air”?

He floated and flew a couple of times, maybe trying to emulate me, but couldn’t get the hang of simply sitting on nothing.

After I signed off I sent my significant other a letter containing the snapshot of my character floating around. Then we started laughing at the ridiculousness of what I’d done.

I spent about 10 minutes of my evening, not washing dishes or picking up dirty clothes, but walking around in a virtual world, looking basically like I do in the real world and acting like I do in the real world. When people tried to talk to me I ignored them, and when given a minute to do something I:

a) sat down

b) took a picture

Has the world really gotten so abstract that now instead of walking outside and strolling in the park with my dog I’m going to spend my time manually controlling a virtual image of myself walking around in an online seaside resort?

Apparently yes.

In other news, I haven’t taken a shower in days, I’ve lost my sense of smell & taste, and I like the song “This One’s For Randy” by the band Hot Rod Circuit.