From Norweigian comedy duo Øystein og Meg (Øystein and Me), a medieval monk learns how to use his brand new piece of technology, a “book”.

No, I’m not really looking for prosthetic dicks. I’m describing the sort of dilemmas that torture a hip guy who’s concerned about his appearance and performance every day in the make-believe world of Second Life, a surreal virtual reality Internet game that is sucking in the nerdy dispossessed faster than blogs did a couple of years ago.

I first heard of Second Life when some losers staged a make-believe anti-war rally on the cyber white house just previous to my mocking it mercilessly. I realised the mockery had potential to become more profound if I went in and had a look around myself, inspired by these hilarious cyber explorations (and these ones. And these ones). What I have found diminishes to the size of a flea any nerdly activity in which I have ever previously taken part – and I am someone who won the Latin award in grade 9 and have had a blog for 3 years.

First off, you can look like anything you want to look like. This means that anyone with the most deprecating self-esteem issues can be that magnificent specimen of hormone-enraging humanity they secretly dreamed of while designing Frogger in the 80s. I myself am now a 7-foot tall black guy with bulging muscles and piercing grey eyes, and named Zulfi Basevi (named after hot Bollywood actor Zulfi Syed), but not because I want to be a 7-foot black man with bulging muscles and piercing grey eyes; it’s because I’d like to have sex with a 7-foot black man with bulging muscles and piercing grey eyes. Hmmmmm … what does this say about me?

Other, more imaginative yet no less geeky people fly away with their fantasies, donning Amazon armour or fairy wings, enrobing themselves in multi-coloured sparkling mists, becoming giant bipedal, talking animals for some reason, or – predictably – Star Trek characters.

But mostly people just dress like prostitutes.

And they do really weird things as they live out their deepest fantasies. The other day while flying around the other day (yes, you can fly in Second World) looking for crap to fuck with, I blundered into a lesbian wedding. Both brides had modified their SL bodies to appear as if they were in their third trimester (the hussies!). Would they give birth, I wanted to know. Is there really someone out there eccentric enough to script the animation of an SL woman in the throes of labour, let alone 2 SL women screaming in birthing agony?

No cyber birth as it turned out. I turned a corner and found the hideous lab where they are practising constructing their virtual baby. Think the climactic scene on Alien 4 when Sigourney Weaver all her mutant, disfigured alien-Sigourney Weaver clone hybrids. Ew. Before I could take a screenshot of this horror I was asked to leave their “safe space”.

And that’s the problem with SL. It’s the same problem I have with most bloggers. Some dear souls take a flexible and wonderful tool for imaginative self-expression, begin to mistake it for the real world, and turn it into an exclusive clique factory resembling high school by calling it “community”. The lesbians didn’t want me at their make-believe wedding. Some cyber goth chic sneered at my preppy looking SL body while I was checking out a really cool haunted labyrinth game. I was asked to leave a bar where all the patrons we giant animals because I was human. Well, you can’t keep this cyber brotha down!

The majority of SL sites are vast empty spaces plastered with advertisements or things you can buy by clicking on them. There are also scads of houses, the fantasy land purchased by SL-obsessed people whose first lives must not be so hot.

Buy with what? Well, you’re given a certain amount of Linden dollars (the SL currency) when you sign up. After that you can buy more fake money with a real credit card (at a pretty good rate, as far as imagination transactions do), you can do various bizarre things like dance on special money making dance pads in make believe casinos, or you can get a Second Life job. A job. In virtual space. In utopia, the best we can do is get a job to pay for our extravagant lifestyle.

And that allows Second Life to demonstrate how truly pathetic we are as a people, even more than the self-indulgent physique changes, the serious attempts at real life, the self-righteous protection of the cyber lifestyle as a valid one, or the fucking talking animals. It’s the idea that this very cool mode for expression (there are some jaw-droppingly stunning places in this little world) has been turned into a tawdry and insidious quest for exclusivity and status, just like in the real world, except you can fly. That’s really depressing.

Now what is geekier than going to Second Life? Going to Second Life and blogging about it.

FLASH Hey! Wonkette totally pays hommage to my cyber-geekiness while mocking me at the same time. Nerdier than blogging about Second Life is being mocked bu another blog about Second Life! I rule!

Best line of the evening from the ultra super hunky winner of best short film, Ari Sandel, on his West Bank Story, a reworking of West Side Story taking place between Israelis and Palestinians:

I made a comedy musical about Israelis and Palestinians that takes place between two falafel stands in the West Bank …

The only film from the whole dreary mess I haven’t seen yet that I now want to.

The worst offense is the raised public promenade that is closed to the public and cuts the square off from both Bay and Queen. It’s not going anywhere in the makeover, however; some spectacularly idiotic do-gooders have named the now-closed collonade an untouchable (and unblow-up-able) piece of heritage architecture. Aren’t these decisions supposed to benefit the public instead of antagonise it?

But back to the facelift. The four final the design bids have been announced and they’re all quite interesting in their attempts to reclaim the reviled promenade for the public. Of course what remains unknowable is whether it reopens once the winning design is built, no matter how pretty they make it. Since it’s not going anywhere, I’m intrigued by Zeidler Partnership’s raised tree-lined promenade leading to the bizarre wavy gardens. Equally interesting is Rogers Marvel Architects’ upper path to a swoopy swath of urban countryside.

Rogers Marvel Architects

More pix after the jump

Baird Sampson Neuerts Architects

Plant Architect Inc.

Rogers Marvel Architects

Zeidler Partnerships

Zeidler Partnerships

For more a more detailed look at the project check out the Toronto Star and Torontoist.

Construction starts sometime next year.

(All images lifted from the Toronto Star)

To make everything that much more fun and real, also on this day in 1389 in Strasbourg, 2000 Jews were accused of causing the bubonic plague by poisoning the city’s wells. All 2000 were then burned alive and Jews were subsequently banned from the city for 100 years. Similar murderous acts were committed against Jews all over Europe around this time.

Hurray for being a single Jew on a day named after a Christian martyr for people who feel all superior because there are 2 of them! Hurray!