Dolmere Talamasca - Second Life "resident"

After looking around the sim land I decided to inspect the premises of the church. As you walk up to the building's entrance you're greeted with a donation box to the side. One could click the doors to swing them open and enter (they had not yet programmed them to refuse my avatar's click [that is, of course, a joke. I'm not a griefer, just a harmless atheist]). Once inside just about the first thing you see? Yup - another donation box. "Help us keep this site, to get in touch with our faith" says the hover text on the box outside. "Help us to keep this site."[sic] says the hover text across the box inside. Donation boxes both inside and out show a Linden balance. I'm the type to believe these balances are self-donations to prime the pump. I could be convinced that with the percentage of believers on the grid it's possible some of the lindey bucks were in fact donated from peeps grateful for the location. I made sure to take a picture looking out the doors - I loved seeing the donations box inside backed by the unused island and the for sale signs beyond.

I started by simply getting behind the pulpit and preaching to the gathered crowd. Mallow Niven joked that it would be great to have a room full of avian avatars to act as the flock for a photo shoot. Previously on this blog I speculated that it might be a good idea to offer myself out for hire as wall ornamentation for SL churches. With this visit to an empty sim I was able to see exactly how that would look. The clergy are ornamental in society so my presence behind the pulpit was, of course, merely an homage to them and the beginning of my career as ornamentation.

Somehow along the way my avatar slowly morphed into the skeleton-hung-on-a-cross version. I was pleased to find that my own cross pretty much matched the one already on display at the church. I had to spend some time trying various avatar placements in order to see what angles might be best to either replace or properly accent the existing ornament.

Inspecting ownership of the trees and the prims of the church building itself showed them to be owned by MarcoJC Hotalin. We were introduced to MarcoJC previously. It doesn't seem that he's a builder, or at least he's not the builder here, as most of the prims I could see were from other creators. One such is the church itself which was created by Jack Feaver. An exception was the cross hanging on the wall which was created by MarcoJC.

Some items decorating the Jesus church plot were owned by others - like the flower pot/tree things inside on the floor in back and on the dais up front which are owned by angels Jewel (a member of the Trafic group).

There is currently also a single square prim outside under a tree created and owned by Flabi Underwood. Flabi did not leave any contents so it's not a scripted object spying on people or whatever. Flabi rezzed into SL on 7/30/07 so I'm willing to bet he/she is a new resident trying to get used to the virtual world and its ways. More than likely Flabi was using the church as a sandbox at some point or maybe just clicked a wrong button while praying. Who knows.

I was hoping I might find a hidden sex club or brothel in the bell tower or under the church while looking around but the Trafic group seems to have kept their sinful side off the Jesus sim for now.

As an aside I looked into Jack Feaver since he created the church itself. In Jack's picks we learn that you can probably get your own prefab church building by visiting "HOUSES THAT JACK BUILT" at angel moons, Saranac (219, 224, 22). However, on visiting that parcel one finds a no-entry lot with a residential home built on it - not a store. Searching places for "HOUSES THAT JACK BUILT" returned a better result. This one dropped me in a store in the Berkshire sim! Woot.

I found the church on the other side of the prefab display lot. It's called the "Country Church". It costs 600L which is a real nice deal. Below are a few shots of the church as it stands on the sale lot. Jack's homes are really quite beautiful and cover a wide range of styles - if you're in the market go take a peek!! I especially liked his Mayberry home.

MarcoJC was unavailable for comment at press time. Silvy Amat was online and I had a short conversation with her. She said that she and MarcoJC are partners though they're not listed as such in their profiles yet.

I asked her questions like this:

Dolmere Talamasca: The Trafic group has no charter - any reason for that?
Dolmere Talamasca: What was the inspiration behind creating a sim named "Jesus"?
Dolmere Talamasca: since the land on Jesus (save the center build) is owned by the Trafic group and marked for sale by that group I was wondering why
Dolmere Talamasca: not use alts instead of your main accounts which are both (MarcoJC and Silvy) in quite a few sex groups?

Unfortunately Silvy speaks very little english and had some trouble following my questions. She did not give me permission to quote our conversation. Basically it was pretty much - Marco knows more details, he's her partner, they have no theme for the Jesus sim yet, she's a new SL resident, the Trafic group is used for group sim development projects and they've moved on to a new sim already.

I sometimes like to include lyrics in my blog entries. I believe I was inspired to do so by Danielle Ferguson. In this entry I decided to include Megadeth's Holy Wars since visiting a church in a virtual world manages to remind me of the tune. I intentionally ensured that god is lowercase as a sign of my lack of respect for religion.

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Artist: Megadeth
Album: Rust In Peace (1990)
Song: Holy Wars... The Punishment Due
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Brother will kill brother
Spilling blood across the land
Killing for religion
Something I don't understand

Fools like me, who cross the sea
And come to foreign lands
Ask the sheep, for their beliefs
Do you kill on god's command?

A country that's divided
Surely will not stand
My past erased, no more disgrace
No foolish naive stand

The end is near, it's crystal clear
Part of the master plan
Don't look now to Israel
It might be your homelands

Holy wars

Up on my podium, as the
Know it all scholar
Down in my seat of judgement
Gavels bang, uphold the law
Up on my soapbox, a leader
Out to change the world
Down in my pulpit as the holier
Than-thou-[would]-could-be-messenger of god

Wage the war on organized crime
Sneak attacks, repel down the rocks
Behind the lines
Some people risk to employ me
Some people live to destroy me
Either way they die

They killed my wife, and my baby
With hopes to enslave me
First mistake... last mistake!
Paid by the alliance, to slay all the giants
Next mistake... no more mistakes!

Fill the cracks in, with judicial granite
Because I don't say it, don't mean I aint
thinkin' it
Next thing you know, they'll take my thoughts away
I know what I said, now I must scream
of the overdose
And the lack of mercy killings