Stevie Joe Checks Out Politics in Second Life

The resident population of Second Life has just exceeded 7 million, and the political world has noticed. Several of the presidential candidates are represented with virtual campaign headquarters, and some of the talking heads have also made appearances.

Just a few days ago, I was at a virtual interview with Arianna Huffington. Some technical difficulties made the audio a little hard to hear, and they couldn't get Arianna's avatar to appear in the open air amphitheater where the interview took place. Still, she took the time to make the appearance as she has done before and promises to do again.

Not all of the presidential campaigns are represented in Second Life, but the top Democrats are here as is Republican candidate Ron Paul. You can visit virtual headquarters for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Ron Paul, but the only campaign that has an official presence in Second Life is that of Democrat Mike Gravel. The rest are unofficial sites created and managed by volunteers.

In her interview, Huffington agreed with the assessment that candidates are treating Second Life much like candidates treated the world wide web during the 2000 campaign. That is, they know it has great potential, but they aren't yet sure how to most effectively use it. As the election approaches, I'm sure we'll see the campaigns get more involved. It will be interesting to see what they do.

Here are some pics of the campaign headquarters (in alphabetic order):

Clinton Campaign Headquarters

Edwards Campaign Headquarters

Gravel Campaign Headquarters

Paul Campaign Headquarters

Obama Campaign Headquarters

Reporting from Second Life,
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Plays Diplomat

This morning I heard a scratching and whining at my backdoor. I thought maybe it was Junior Junior coming back to perform more Lassie-style heroics, but it was Junior himself. He was just a mess and smelled something awful (not that Junior's everyday scent is all that agreeable).

Apparently, he and Dickie Jensen had both been in hiding from Jimmy for quite some time. They had been camping down by the river below Mayor Barney's Mudslide Estates. Every now and then, one of them would sneak back up to Dickie's house for some food (Junior never has food in the house). Fear of Jimmy and a lack of liquid assets had kept them away from the market, and they had finally run out of stuff to eat.

Of course, I told Junior that they were both idiots and Jimmy probably wouldn't kill them so they should just come home. Junior needed some greater assurance and asked me to broker a peace deal for them. So, I went on over to Jimmy's place to see what could be done. As you can imagine, Jimmy is still sore at both Junior and Dickie seeing as how is motorcycle is wrecked and his hair half burnt off.

Jimmy seemed open to the idea of not killing them, but we were having a heckuva time figuring out how they could make amends. Neither one has any money or marketable skills. Jimmy won't tolerate having Junior around the house doing chores as this would place him in close proximity to Juanita. It was gonna be pretty darned hard for Junior to pay off the cost of fixing the motorcycle.

There was no way for Dickie to help Jimmy's hair grow back any faster. If it were anyone else, maybe you could get even by shaving his hair so he would suffer a similar humiliation. The problem here, however, is that you can't humiliate a guy who voluntarily runs around town nekkid.

That's when it occurred to us that the solution was to have Dickie do chores around Jimmy's house and to shave off Junior's hair. Both would also have to agree to allow Jimmy to give them public wedgies at any time for the rest of their natural lives.

Welcome home, boys!
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Goes Clubbing in Second Life

As you might recall, I have been exploring the virtual world of Second Life in the name of science. There are over 6.8 million residents now, and the growth has been rapid. When you first start navigating around Second Life, you will notice that there are a lot of night clubs. I know what you're thinking, "How do you drink booze at a virtual night club?" Well, if you are dead set on drinking, you can provide your own favorite beverage while sitting in front of the computer. One night, while alternating stingers and tequila shots, I would up taking off my pants and jumping on stage with a bunch of showgirls (in Second Life, of course). So, behaving like a drunken idiot is still on the table.

Anyway, the attraction at the night clubs is not the alcohol but the music. You can find clubs playing just about any kind of music you can imagine. Some will simply stream music from an existing internet radio station. Others will feature in-house DJs that will spin the tunes and take requests. Still more offer live music.

How the heck do they offer live music? Well, just like on regular radio, they set up some microphones and let the musicians have at it. Sometimes, they are a band playing at a real club somewhere in the world, and the audio gets streamed to Second Life. Other times, it's a dude with a guitar sitting in his kitchen. In either case, you actually see the performers in the virtual club. They appear as avatars, like everyone else in Second Life, and they play instruments and dance just like in the real world (I know it's hard to visualize - but it's pretty neat when you see it).

The Velvet is found inside an old, abandoned theater building. It features a stage, organ, and mechanical bull. The crowd is very literate and frighteningly Canadian. There's a live DJ pretty much every night.

One club I visited was The Velvet. This club offers indie rock and a pretty interesting collection of regulars (one of which appears only as a spider). Sometimes, it's the folks you "meet" that provide the entertainment. While listening to the music, folks engage in "chat" to talk about nearly anything. On one recent evening, The Velvet featured a haiku contest. On another, there was an impromptu iambic pentameter throw-down. You just don't find stuff like that in Junebug Holler. As an added bonus, nobody barfs on your feet.

This all reminds me that I might need to get a new class of friends.

Stray Cat's is a hard rock club with a very international clientele. It's not unusual to find a large crowd with folks from the US, Europe, and South America. Second Life offers real-time translation tools to help with language problems.

Umbra Penumbra provides another example of the design work that is evident nearly everywhere in Second Life. By the way, the furniture is all functional which is kinda weird. After a while, though, it all starts to seem normal.

See you on the other side!
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Gets All Up With People

Sunday morning, while listening to Pastor Luke droning on and on about something or other, I was thinking about my commitment to being more positive and how that relates to church. It seems to me that some churches are primarily negative - focusing on sin, penance, eternal damnation, and whatnot. Others seem to be concerned with the positive - helping one another, seeing the divine in our world, blah, blah, blah.

Whether a church emphasizes the negative or positive seems to depend more on the preacher than the religion. It seems that you can take most religions either way, but it's the preacher that sets the tone in a church. Maybe that's why I liked Farmer Len's Quaker meeting. They have no clergy. You make of it what you will, and, overall, they seemed like pretty upbeat folks.

Like I've said before, me and JC are pretty close. I consider Him to be an optimist. He seems to see the good in everyone, even Junior (which is pretty darned hard to do). I'll try to keep myself on the JC track and see the good in folks. Now, that's going to be a tall bill when it comes to President Numbnuts, but I'll do my best.

I'll bet he's good at tapping a keg,
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Celebrates Memorial Day

We had quite the Memorial Day Weekend here in Junebug Holler despite the absence of Junior. Ever since Junior stole and wrecked Jimmy's motorcycle, he's been hiding in his "undisclosed location." Good thing, too, because Jimmy is still sore about that and will likely beat Junior good when he finds him.

Anyway, there was much excitement, and most of it came when Dickie Jensen set Jimmy on fire. As you might expect, Dickie was drunk, but he was not yet nekkid. In honor of our veterans, Dickie was wearing a camouflage Speedo with a 101st Airborne patch right over his package. He thought that it might be fun to spray lighter fluid from his mouth and set it aflame with his Bic. Where could such a plan go wrong?

Well, Jimmy was the long-haired biker type, but not anymore. He made the grave mistake of getting too close to Dickie (a risk under any circumstance), and Dickie went ahead and set his hair on fire. Fortunately, the gathered crowd was armed with large quantities of beer and was able to quickly douse the flames. In the confusion, Dickie escaped and has presumably joined Junior in his undisclosed location.

Jimmy, as you might expect, was hopping mad. It has not been a good week for him, but this is part of life here in Junebug Holler. You have to expect these occasional setbacks. Besides, what's the alternative? Boredom, that's what. Give me drunken excitement any day (easy to say for a guy with all his hair).

Pardon me, got a light?
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Smells the Flowers

Mrs. Stevie Joe has been telling me to relax. See, she's been reading the Stevie Joe Parker's Guide to Life and feels that I am being too negative. This is primarily because I've been writing nasty things about Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Monica Goodling (as if that's a bad thing). Anyway, Mrs. Stevie Joe thinks that I can more effectively save the world by using a more positive message - talk about what I'm fer rather than what I'm agin.

In an unusual twist, I've decided to take her advice. This is despite the fact that I have discovered that Monica Goodling's testimony before Congress provides evidence that her former colleague and current US attorney Tim Griffin conspired with Karl Rove to commit vote fraud during the 2004 Presidential election. Nope, I'm not going to talk about that.

Instead, I'm going to focus on the good. So, what is so damn good around here? Well, for starters, there's me. I'm pretty good and smart to boot. Oh, I forgot to mention good-looking.

Peace my Brothers and Sisters,
Stevie Joe Parker

Stevie Joe Reports on the New Monica-Gate

No, not that Monica. This time, it's Monica Goodling, the former Director of Public Affairs for the US Department of Justice. She testified today in Congressional hearings about the dismissal of US Attorneys.

I know folks have gone on and on about that whole mess, but that's not what concerns me. The bug up my butt today is trying to figure out how the hell Miss Goodling became a top-level official in the Justice Department to begin with.

First, Monica Goodling is 33 years old. If she were a whiz kid who graduated top of her class from Harvard Law School, it still would raise some eyebrows that she made it this high up the organization chart by the age of 33. Yet, she isn't a whiz kid, and she didn't graduate top of her class from Harvard.

So, what the heck is going on here? She graduated from Law School in 1999. She got hired by the Department of Justice in 2001. What could she have been doing in 2000? Oh, that's right, she was an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the presidential campaign. By the way, she worked in the RNC alongside Tim Griffin who was recently appointed by Alberto Gonzales to replace one of them fired US attorneys. What a coincidence!

Miss Goodling graduated from Regent University Law School. This is the school founded by Pat Robertson to (according to their mission statement), "Bring to bear the will of our Creator, Almighty God, upon legal education and the legal profession."

Well, maybe it's a good school anyway, right? Not exactly, US News ranks it as a "Tier 4" law school, the lowest tier. It ranked 136th out of 170 schools reviewed. Over the past four years, Regent grads have passed the Virginia bar exam only 51.5% of the time. The statewide pass rate is 73%, and Regent ranks the lowest of any law school in Virginia.

Well, ol' Monica must be some sort of anomaly, right? The Regent University website recently claimed that 150 Regent grads had served in the Bush administration. They also say that their Washington DC alumni association has 867 members (out of 9,617 total alumni). Sure seems like they have quite a focus on politics. Not sure how many preachers they graduate.

Now, I know that some of you are thinking that ol' Stevie Joe is just a cranky liberal who's just bent on bad-mouthing Republicans. You're thinking that maybe Monica didn't go to the best school, but that doesn't mean she isn't qualified to help run the Justice Department. I'm sure that her college website will reveal her hidden genius and qualifications (ignore the typos - spellcheckers didn't work all that well in 1997).
After you read all about her hobbies and family, take a look at her resume. It makes her qualifications quite clear. She was a swim instructor, worked the front desk at a Holiday Inn, was the editor of her college yearbook, and student government president! She sounds more than ready to help run the US Justice Department to me!

Onward Christian Soldiers!
Stevie Joe Parker