glamazona

i am very very fond of horses, i am lucky that my parents have them and i get to go ride occasionally. i must say that with my overactive fashion mania that i have never really liked most of the riding habits out there, and always wanted to devise a kind of private personal riding habit according to my tastes. women's riding habits and equestriennes are rather charmingly called "amazona" in spanish, and so of course i would want to call my version of a riding habit (and an equestrienne styled avatar) a "glamazona."


i have always wanted to learn to ride aside, and so in my mind the glamazona prototype would definitely have a skirt. i love spanish-style habits, and the magnificent Yuki-Hime ensemble from The Black Canary has that kind of severe yet graceful flavor, though it is more properly described as a sort of neo-victorian-kimono mashup. it is a very distinctive and ladylike outfit, which i totally fell in love with as soon as i saw it.  and the sleeves would look gorgeous hanging down from the horse.  the Yuki hime outfit is part of a hunt though, check the Black Canary store for details. i chose a spanish-style hat to go with it, and of course if i was riding through the wastelands i would want to take a katana to use against snakes and other such hazards.  perhaps this is purely fancy on my part but this area is strongly reminiscent of deep south texas (near the border), and i half expect to see a coyote or two.

and this is why i was listening to narcocorridos while writing up this post. i must say that the horse is nice though a bit complicated.  i have yet to find a horse maker in second life who makes peruvian pasos, which are the horses that i ride.  someday perhaps. this particular horse is from AKK Horses, and it is interesting. i have always wanted to have an arabian, so why not. it is however a trifle expensive.  it is my very first second life horse. i am so pleased i don't have to clean his feet.

juana la glamazona tejana wears:

Yuki hime by the Black Canary (winter hunt gift)
Andalusian hat by Daini Ken
Miriel Granny boots by Siyu Suen
Cortech Katana by Beezle Warburton
Bone Collector collar by Nomine
Yanzi wave hair by DrLife
Raine cream Dolly tears red by popfuzz
Heavens Tear eyes by Tohru

Arabian Horse by AKK Horses (Kristivon Kolache)

at las animas, ashvasta
listening to contrabando y traicion cover by
maldito bajo

dulce et decorum est...

...pro patria mori. so they say. and as we celebrate our 6th wartime memorial day, i will take the liberty of travelling through time, so to speak, because blogs let you do that.

i visited the second life vietnam memorial actually in the middle of april. which is why i think the cherry trees are all in bloom.

i have never been to the real memorial. i went to arlington national cemetery, and tried to find it, but got hung up on the WW2 memorial and so got sidetracked and never made it to the smooth black wound in the green park, inscribed with the names of the fallen.

it must suck, maybe be a cold comfort, in heaven, to be part of a war that is now turned into a cliche'd metaphor--such and such war is the next vietnam, etc. and i hope that in real life, the cherry trees' blossoms flutter over the cold stone monument in the spring...........

GI juana wears:

divine right set the black canary
xishi drl hair
sleeps with butterflies set attachments by gauze
crossed out clown skin from carnival of doom
carpe noctem boots by nightshade designs
misa set by sugar
oshun collar midnight by dark eden
dreams by red queen
forbidden 14 by lionskins

teddy bear hotel....and shiny innards

all work and no play makes juana a dull girl. so i had to rectify the situation, wandering in SL.

i visited poetik velvets, and found myself highly amused at one of teh doorways in the hotel. one of them opened into a large gullet leading into various stomachs. you pass through steaming puddles of digestive juices, with the most evocative background noises, and at the end of it all is a vast room with prim noobs being digested. most amusingly one was labeled "phillip linden".

of course i had to pose with such an important personage.

my amusement with entrails goes back quite into the mists of my personal history. sadly they were often a part of our daily lives, as tripe is considered a delicacy among my peeps. it's so gross, but i remember very distinctly seeing goats slaughtered and their intestines removed, cleaned, and cooked.

later in life i had another little brush with entrail-dom. i think i must be one of the few people who has ever been complimented on their intestines. during my caesarean an unnamed person remarked very amused, that my guts were very pretty, all pink and shiny. i was conscious at the time (heavily drugged) and not amused at all. but now that it's past it makes me laugh because it is sort of funny, in a peculiar sort of way. its not every day that one's entrails get complimented on their beauty.

which brings us to the other doorway....

it was full of teddy bears. apparently there's a 50s children's book featuring teddy bears and dolls in subversively naughty scenarios...i could not resist.

i could hear tedi's voice saying the vilest of things as i wandered through the dollhouse doing semi-questionable things with the teddy bears most thoughtfully provided by the hotel.

the naughty doll juana wears:

sleeps with butterflies gown set by gauze
harajuku streetwalker shoes by the black canary
Xia hair by DrL
forbidden 14 skin by LionSkins
cut gloves from brood set, KC designs
curlicue undershirt, chichi set, cutea benelli
stockings from Misa set by sugar
cigarette by primitive design.

in the hotel at poetik velvets.....down the hallway, left and right doors.

incroyable

i have always loved the crazy clashy mad exaggerated styles of the incroyables and merveilleuses of the directoire.

but then again when i was younger and more impressionable i had a mild obsession with the french revolution and napoleon too.

i really love visual kei. sometimes i think that the people who wear that style are like the modern versions of the incroyables (and merveilleuses, in drag).

in the dreamworld, where one can dress as madly and as improbably as one wishes with impunity, some of the meaning of this style i think is lost in translation. it is nothing to go shopping and toss together a vague facsimilie of incroyable fashion.

in particular i hate frock coats and tail coats in second life because they never fit my stumpy little avatar. and ditto with the jabots. on the bright side this is a style that requires one to look exaggerated.

so i did as best i could, and found a funny napoleonic sim to play around in. it was literally named "napoleon's empire" and had a profusion of mostly empty little palaces to loot, ships in the harbor and also circling the waters of the surrounding sea.

there was even a little guillotine in the little fortress, and a rustic looking in, complete with a little rat that would crawl around the floor in an endless loop.

it amuses me too. the real incroyables were rebelling against the revolution--they were royalists, and therefore really expressing themselves quite dangerously with their crazy clothes.

it's sad that in this insipid second life version, there is no political subtext. i suppose if i were wearing a bush/cheney button instead of a cockade it might come close, but i'd rather not. i fear that this outfit is way too restrained for proper 18th century incroyable-ness, but it's only second life, and we must make allowances for that.

jeanne the second life incroyable wears:

napoleonic bicorne hat ( i totally love the cockade) by illusions
coat, jabot, cuffs, from Pearl set & Lovebound tails by the black canary
rQ Torn Noir by Red Queen
Copper Sand Pants fall front pantaloons by Ravenswood Regency (To a T)
forbidden 20 by LionSkins
stockings (harajuku doll) and fallen disgrace boots by nightshade designs
napoleonic hussar saber by Moyer's Military

i couldn't leave that sim without trying out the guillotine. sadly there is a bit of a predjudice apparently against short avatars, because it rather inhumanely would mean that only the top half of jeanne's head would get chopped off.

but i'd rather have half my head chopped off than suffer a bush restoration.

the EGL glam girl

Originally uploaded by al-zahra

Heavens! it is amazing what happens when you are just busy being a librarian. i was standing at the second life librarian reference desk when one of my acquaintances arrived in the most splendid outfit........i had to find out what it was and where it was from, and she spoke the three words that have now become so powerful as to put me under a spell.....The Black Canary. When i visited it amused me much because while i was binging i was given a cup of tea and company by the sweet salesgirl.

Of course i don't take things straight up and so i added a collar and cuffs from different places, and a cigarette holder too. I wore this to Troy's second fundraising party, because his house just screamed out for it. And it amuses me to as this is probably one of my more librarianish gowns.

the stats for miss juana:

hair rose: GF suede Black rose hairpin
dress:
TBC Lady Marra
collar: Crimson Shadows White Shadow collar
cuffs: Ookami Ningen Remains of the Night cuffs
hair: Magika Lucy
necklace: Tekel'li Immaculate heart
skin: Nomine ultralight vamp blood red
cigarette holder: Mika elegant animated cigarette holder
shoes: bax boots