We're off to see the wizard...

Tori Landau reports on the latest themed party on OUtopia

Our usual party venue is OUtopia’s green, so as instructed I arrived at the green just before 8pm on Saturday 8th May expecting to possibly see the Emerald City. Our Events Officer, however, had other ideas so below me and leading away from the green towards the Exhibition Hall was a yellow brick road. Following the yellow brick road I soon heard voices and began to question my sanity but inspection of the road revealed it to be the source of the audio clips from the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ with “I’m melting. Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world”, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” and my personal favourite given that it was a university party, “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking!” The road’s ultimate destination turned out to be the OUbliette which is below the Exhibition hall on the seaward side and so after seeing that it was being guarded by flying monkeys I took a deep breath, readied my axe (I was a tin woman) and ventured inside.

As a lot of regulars were either busy in real life (tsk!) or having problems logging into Second Life, for a short while the party was a bit on the quiet side but thankfully some new students turned up and ‘got the party started’. Whilst admiring Jadis’s decor we instructed the new students on how to hear the music, dance and as Linden Labs new policy had come into effect there was an extremely useful exchange of information regarding how to update 3rd party viewers such as Emerald and also Viewer 2 of the standard viewer. It later transpired that out of date viewers had been the cause of the late appearance of some regulars.

Though not compulsory, some of us had dressed for the occasion with Quentin as the tin man, Jadis as Elphaba, Titiana as Dorothy, Angel as a beautiful blue-haired witch, and Rocky not only dressing as but behaving as the lion. GiroBatol fitted in perfectly as a wolf and by bringing on his alt we then had two wonderful sentient wolves bopping away along with the DJ’s very cute dance–containing wolf. Not wishing to disappoint (regulars will know that I nearly always change outfit half way through a party) I changed from being a tin woman to Dorothy and then much hilarity ensued when Xara and Kered arrived – both as Dorothy though Xara had black hair. With Xara’s dog Cassie doubling as Toto for the evening all that missing was the Scarecrow. The conclusion regarding the lack of a scarecrow was that perhaps he had been used by Kickaha for a real life barbecue... a raven’s revenge?

As we had new students to educate some absinthe was handed out ensuring that drunken dancing was again a feature of our parties. Quentin as always played great music and it was wonderful to see so many new students attending the party and having a great time.

When gently asked about the night’s festivities Rocky responded with, “I was vvvvery nervous going to the the Wizard of Oz ppppparty. The music was vvvvery loud and scccary but everyone was very kind and caring - apart from the nasty things behind the ccccurtains. I particularly enjoyed flying round the dance floor. Yours, The Cowardly Lion (please don't yell at me if you don't like these comments)”

Pub quiz

Tori Landau reports on the latest pub quiz.

Shortly before 8pm on Friday 28th May I teleported to my allotment and flew over to the pub. There was a distinct chill in the air so I found the rest of the Open Arms regulars inside and already helping themselves to sandwiches and beverages. Our Quiz Mistress for the evening, Jadis Mai, logged in on time ready to start the quiz; however, due to real life meals being consumed an executive decision was made to wait until 8.15pm. These 15 minutes were not without some excitement though due to the appearance of Kickaha’s alt, Loyd Grossman. The rumour had been that the beautiful red fox had been killed off by the raven; however, here he was in all his magnificent furry glory sitting on a barstool and conversing with OUtopians. It seems though that the raven still has the upper hand in the avatar stakes as just before the quiz started Loyd was logged out and a few minutes later the raven logged in... we thought it may have been to heckle the contestants, but no, he stayed away from the pub much to our relief (just joking Kickaha!).

Jadis sat away from the contestants so that we wouldn’t see the answers (and I think to have a sneaky drink) and then explained to anyone new to the pub quizzes how cheating would be avoided, which is basically that the questions are asked quite quickly so the answer is whatever pops into your head first. The next query from newcomers was how would the answers be recorded and marked. So, the quiz was already becoming educational for anyone who didn’t know how to make a note card in which to record answers. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know how to create a note card you open the inventory, click Create on the top toolbar of the inventory, click on new note, change the description of the note, write in it whatever you need, click save at the bottom of the note, then find new note in note cards under recent items in the inventory, right click it and select rename (for quiz mine was ‘Tori’s pub quiz answers 28/05’). At the end of the quiz we would swap note cards, Jadis would give each of us the answers on a note card and then we would give her the score of the person whose answers we had marked.

Again we were all individual contestants with no teams being entered and after checking this, Jadis started the quiz. There were five categories: Animal Groups, Capital Cities, Collectors, Inventors & Inventions and Sport.

Here is a small sample of the questions asked (answers at bottom of the page)

1. A shrewdness of ...?

2. Capital city of Spain is?

3. A Conchologist collects what?

4. Who invented jeans?

5. Who was the 1996 Formula 1 world champion?

With a bit of false start due to contestants not paying attention, complaints regarding the difficulty of the questions this time around (including accusations directed at the Quiz Mistress during the Collectors round that the words had been made up), swearing, the Publican and others coming in to see how brainy or not we all were and a few note card mix ups that made me think of ‘pass the parcel,’ this quiz night was a lot of fun and very different to last time around when we had all been very quiet and well behaved.

With everything sorted out and note cards finally marked, shortly after 9pm Jadis announced the winners in reverse order: 3rd was Lilac Lupindo winning $250, 2nd was Kira Gilgandra winning $500 and Rocky Joans was the winner (for the second time running) and received $750 and many congratulations. Many thanks to Jadis for organising and running the quiz.

Answers to quiz questions: 1. Apes, 2. Madrid, 3. Shells, 4. Levi Strauss, 5. Damon Hill

Eshala's 2nd rezzday party

Four Daleks and an Engagement by Tori Landau.

Sunday 2nd May and busy with finishing articles for the previous edition of LOL! for publication on the following day I sent some inventory items to Eshala... and then noticed that her rezzday was the following day. Initially, the thought was to have a surprise party so on Sunday evening Hatshepsut distributed note cards, QC was booked, Jadis enlisted to assist with decorating and I came up with a ruse to ensure that Eshala would be on OUtopia at 8pm the following evening. Monday morning arrived and realising that it was the official May day holiday I saw an opportunity to ensure that not only could Jadis and myself decorate throughout the day but that we could contact everyone about the party and so it became a May day party with a Doctor Who theme (Eshala had suggested having a party with this theme). Decorating began around lunchtime and thanks must go to Umbra who made a delightful dalek and to DavidMike who left his TARDIS as part of the decor. Jadis managed to find posters of the Ood, Cybermen, Daleks, K-9 and made a very clever sign that could be changed from reading Happy May Day to Happy Rezzday Eshala. Along with a weeping angel doubling as the dance ball and a spinning vortex dance floor the scene was set to spring the surprise.

The party started promptly and soon there were three sentient daleks (Prash, Joie and Johnt42) ‘ex-dance-inateing’ (thanks to Johnt42 for that!), three 10th Doctors (Kester, Jon and an unidentified someone) a 5th Doctor (QC), a 4th Doctor (Jonno), a weeping angel (me) and glamorous assistants of both genders all bopping away together in peace so it could be said that OUtopia lived up to its name. The rezzday girl arrived slightly late due to changing into a cyberman but thankfully she had not been fully assimilated as her emotions showed through when the true nature of the party was revealed to her via the sign and she was presented with her rezzday cake. “I forgot it was even my rezzday so the party came as a huge, and very lovely, surprise to me”, Eshala commented when armed with my sonic screwdriver I cautiously approached her for a quote.

A sentient K-9 then appeared in the form of Rocky who decided to guard QC’s TARDIS tip jar and threatened to bite the ankles of people who didn’t tip our wonderful DJ so it wasn’t long before the total reached $1000 at which point K-9 was happy enough and went off to dream and count electric sheep no doubt. Several new students came along so it was an opportunity to teach them about the OU in Second Life and there was also discussion of the Doctor Who and Torchwood sims.

A couple dance ball was then requested which proved very popular, caused me to become human and gave Lilac the opportunity to announce her SL only engagement to Kester much to the delight of the assembled partygoers. Lilac and Kester are having their SL only wedding at Kester’s home on 3rd July but there will be a party on OUtopia on 4th July. On behalf of everyone I would like to extend my best wishes to the happy couple for their SL life together.

After that the three sentient daleks started fighting and armed with sonic screwdrivers the rest of us attacked; the result being that the daleks blew up and Breen was hit on the head by a dalek part. And so, after a very eventful evening, the party ended in true Doctor Who fashion with the daleks defeated, Breen recovering from his battle wounds and the rest of us heading back into real life once more to sleep.