I’ve just spent the last three hours playing with Second Life, a pretty cool internet thing where you get a body and you wander around talking to other people.

You create a character for free, and it drops your character on an island that teaches you how to use the engine, and then teleports you to a starter place.

What was going on in the starter place was just bizarre. First time I was there, three people summoned Chthulu, which was rather impressive, until Chthulu started to devour my immortal soul.  (I didn’t know whether it was possible to die, so I was slightly concerned at this point.)  There was also a huge great skeletal dragon thing. The second time back to the starter place, someone had flooded it with bright yellow floaty things that sang “Ring ring ring ring BANANA PHONE!” over and over again, which was a little annoying.

I wasn’t sure what things happen in SL, so searched, erm, ‘gay’ to see what I could find and spent an interesting half hour on a place called Fire Island talking to the people there. One of whom lives only a few miles from me in real life, although the place was populated largely by Americans.

I will be going back, it was certainly interesting.  My character name is Niles Fratica if you want to try and find me there.