The other night I went to the Greenie's dance and frolicked with a teal-green tentacle-monster. As we danced, I looked around the crowd and pondered how we all envisioned the concept "futuristic." Everyone looked sexy; that was my first thought. This is Second Life, however, and avatars have to TRY to not be. Sexy aside, I saw a lot of new ideas about shape and structure and fabric. In the future, fabric doesn't have to be cloth, and clothing doesn't have to cover the epidermis; sometimes it's embedded within, sometimes it takes the physical form and twists it entirely. I'd love to see a Galliano show in 3050 (if we cryogenically preserve him or something) -- would he make clothing out of dry ice and foam?

The opposite of the grungy cyberpunk neko dystopia is a sterile, 2001-style future, clean-lined and vaguely modernist, as if it were forever in a 1960s flick. This kind of future is mirrored in the beautifully made skybox from C&D Designs, the Sky Bar. The couches were a cheeky take on Scan Design or Aems, and the small sections of vegetation definitely rang of contact with alien lifeforms. I walked into this skybox expecting company… Then I realized that they were still on Martian time! Not even the drink-serving droid was there to knock me out a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Yesterday I explored the phrase The Future is Now. Today, in the words of Mike Ladd, welcome to the afterfuture. Things aren't very different here. There's just as much pain as there is joy, and we still make short-term decisions with unfortunate long-term effects. The sun won't cool for another million years or so, the earth is adapting to weather extremes brought on by global climate change, and the mystics say that the only places safe from the onslaught of fire and water are the high mountains. Here, we gather, clinging to the few resources we have left, imaginations bent on survival in the human-caused dystopia.

I'm not sure what "the future is now" means. Interrogating the phrase, it breaks apart a few words, Future and Now. When my daughter asks when a certain event will be held, she doesn't yet comprehend the order of days; Friday might as well be a strange indefinable forever away for her. That's always how I've thought of the word Future too, something that couldn't be pinned down, always receeding, never Now. Now, on the other hand, is far easier to comprehend. We wallow in it, it washes over us…

Special things for Halloween include my family's yearly viewing of the three Oceans movies, anticipating a Lord of the Rings marathon in a month, and bracing for the onslaught of family in December. October continues to rain down lovely frocks and skins, including this new release by L&S, the Leila_Johan Hex costume in honor of a certain movie. The skin is only 66L for the Halloween season from GeEs! It's one of the Tara Reloaded skins, and it's named the Pierrot Halloween Spezial. It's the perfect tattered finery to wear to a zombie ball...

It isn't remotely autumn where my real life body lives. It's still in the 90s outside, and when I listen to internet radio I get weather envy. I try to focus away from it by going somewhere chill and autumnal in Second Life. Today, I trotted my avatar to Octoberville to try my luck at the game. As usual, my attention span was about 30 seconds before I found something shiny and got distracted... But I've heard the game is well worth completing.

Green and orange totally match; or at least they do in October. In this case, I'm wearing a fairy frock from Tomoto with a special edition orange tattoo from Otaku Designs. The skin is perfect and green and new from Cupcakes, part of their Halloween line. The rose hair clip and necklace are especially beautiful -- new creations from Illusions, color-changing for every fairy mood. Back to skipping the stones of Octoberville!

Plastik makes some of the finest little sheath dresses around with perfectly fitting crotch prims, and MiaSnow's makeups are always brilliantly colored and creative. I'm a complete sucker for Halloween kitsch (like pumpkin-print shirts or what have you) and I still can't believe that Aikea of Plastik actually makes it work in a sexy, interesting way. Combined, the orange and green of it all makes me feel like a pumpkin patch at midnight, never a bad sensation! The little mesh leggings from TheCloset work well with the 80s micro-mini look, as do the pointy Scene-style type flats. The hair is a current favorite freebie from Rotten Toe, out at Zombiefest.

I'm overjoyed that it's October -- so many good things are happening to me this month (like, say, a new job) that it's worth pausing to write about. Happy turn of the year! Now if only Orlando would get cold...

Straight and sleek, some Halloween looks are eternal. There's something unearthly about hair so flat that it looks ironed, and paired with a figure-hugging sheath dress, the effect is Mortitia-esque. Plastik just released a series of perfect Halloween skins in which the skeleton very subtly shows through the epidermis. Creepy and pretty, the grey skin tone is a fitting colorless background to the lightly edged bones.

Along with this skin, Schadenfreude's new Tish hair is long and straight and evocative of a certain gothic lady... The hair highlights the bare shoulders of this dress by Sangre Noir, "12", a nicely textured gown for those primly sexy days.

I am wearing mythic things today. My hair is SLink's Ophelia, drawn to float around one's head as if your avatar is immersed in a watery grave. The lines are beautiful, thick strands interspersed by floating ones, a nimbus of messy beauty. It sits above a dress with a number of lines and options, Schadenfreude's Striga. Striga has a mermaid skirt in two kinds, an a-line skirt, and a system skirt or dress option, a plethora as usual from Allegory. The outfit is beautifully constructed, and named after an ancient evil. The Striga looks human enough, but preys upon the life-forces of young children, leaving them in a death-like coma...

I've always loved Babbage. There's a dedication to all things industrial and steamy and dirty and Victorian there that tickles my city-loving heart. When hyasynth sent out a notice that there was a ~silentsparrow~ Babbage gown, I hopped right over and snagged it. The gown has a nice rusty ochre plaid, and accompanying ribbed striped tee. Hunting through my October folder, I found a few perfect things to go with it.