Forks! Edited Transcript

Jedburgh30 Dagger: Hello everyone! Ladies and Gentlemen, Viv, Serafina, Jasper and I are pleased to welcome you to the August edition of the Aether Salon - Forks!. I would like to thank each and every one of you for joining us today.

As many of you know, the Aether Salon met to discuss steam and Victorian topics on the third Sunday of each month, in Palisades and Academy, New Babbage. This is the 28th and final salon under the direction of the founding staff. While I hope you are all excited to be here, I know that I stand before you with mixed emotions.

Just a few matters of housekeeping before we get started. If you are standing in the back, please move forward onto the maze so that you can be assured of hearing the speaker. Please hold your questions until the end, and as a courtesy to all, please turn off everything that feeds the lag: all HUDs, scripts, AOs and so on. Please no rags, bones, bottles, rhythm, music, or unauthorized versions of ‘Porgy and Bess’. Since this is my last introduction, I will take the time to say that this was my bit to make something close to a relevant wisecrack, typically taken from the week’s events in the Steamlands, or ‘real life’. Yes, I picked the non-Euclydian geometry and several of the other ‘things’ here…so…Your cooperation is appreciated.

Edited and unedited transcripts will be posted this week on aethersalon.blogspot.com so you can revisit today’s merriment, read transcripts of past salons, and for a laugh, peruse “overheard at the salon.” Please join the Aether Salon group and receive notifications of future salon events, click the lower right hand corner of the large brown sign by the entrance. We sincerely appreciate the support we receive from everyone in the community and we humbly thank you all.

The thank you section will be covered during my talk, so I will be skipping that bit for the moment. Yes, several of you will either be embarrassed or not speaking to me afterwards

Now I will turn the stage over to Miss Viv for my introduction. Since she said I couldn't do it myself, or risk sounding like Charlie Sheen... Viv?

Viv Trafalgar: Who doesn't love Charlie Sheen? Thank you all for coming today! Before I introduce our speaker, I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart. You've been an amazing part of Salon and we couldn't have done it without you, our witty audience, our fabulous fashionistas, our bright and shining speakers - all of you filled with so much wisdom and knowledge. You are brilliant, each and every one of you.

I especially want to thank Tenk and Shaunathan, for New Babbage - which is a very special place - and Canolli Capalini for being an incredibly special and generous sponsor of the Salon.

Thanks to Beq and Doc O for keeping us rolling. And to Bookworm and PJ for making sure we always look very pretty. Lastly, for Sera, Jed, Jasper, and our Salon Cat, Storm, you all are amazing people, and we've been a fantastic team. Congratulations on all the successes, and here's to more great things in the future. Love you guys.

Oh, and Wait until you see what Jasper's done for a craft. Now, To our Speaker:

Viv Trafalgar cracks her knuckles

It is my great pleasure to introduce the intrepid ironclad captain, as well as best friend a salonista could have, and generally the only person ever allowed to bear arms at Salon, Miss Jedburgh Dagger.

Many of you have served with her in various forms of NB's navy and militia. Others know her as a builder and developer. She's also a sworn enemy of the short-lived concept called the Salon Auction, and, most importantly someone who always has my back. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Miss Dagger.

Jedburgh30 Dagger: It is a far different thing to be back up here as a speaker. I know many of you who are our long time Salonistas are used to me being the stern sister or the smart aleck intro chick...

I would like to take you back to a time when all of this was just a dream (and no, not the time my sinus medicine kicked in...). During the 18th century, the place to discuss politics, or science, or art, was at the local coffee house. The coffee houses of London were full of humor and spirited discussion. For those of you into the Georgian era, get a copy of Boswell's London Diary.
Anyways, as time went by, artists and intellectuals would gather to discuss art and ideas... Thus was born the concept of the salon in the Victorian era. So...segway to a smoky digital city, in 2008

Someone had an idea, that Second Life could be about more than just poseballs and bling. That it could be possible to discuss real topics of import and historical things relevant to the steampunk era we found ourselves in. The story of the Aether Salon has been the idea of one, embraced by others and carried forward by the community. While Viv would be quick to point out that the crew she brought together carried the Salon to where it is now, it was her idea that made all of this happen.

So the first Salon was in October, and was topically about Curses in New Babbage... I was asked to speak, as I had been involved in a roleplay scenario that 'grew legs and ran', much as Mr Undertone's fish story did later. Sidebar-yes the wiggyfish all of you now know as a Babbage staple was just a one off idea that became much larger than anyone expected. Anyway, so we had out first Salon, I spoke a bit with Beq about our quest to recover the Necklace of Harmonia. It grew from there, and became a much larger and well thought out affair, with slide shows, and props...

Many of you learned about submarines, and underwear, and music, and science... I know many of the attendees have been speakers. What I hope is that all of you saw the seamless, informative, well presented things we hoped you would all see. We have a good time doing this. In spite of some of the things we've had happen. I want to thank our EMs. I do know we had restarts on the sim in this location before we started on some occasions, because of the "where did the Academy go" incident.
I think we came close to crashing the sim when we were just in Palisades

One thing I'd like to say is thank Sera for all the work she did in preparing the transcripts. She has to deal with all the AO chatter, and fruity comments, and god knows what all else. So staff-wise, Jasper and I were here all along, doing stuff behind the scenes...and I know that they have been a lot of fun to work with. Again, there are so many things we have to do to pull this off and make it look smooth and professional. I hope we succeeded, most of the time :) We have had a good time, even if it is a lot of stress and work on the hundreds of things that you folks never saw.

We have dealt with church musicals, stormy weather, vacation, wifi outages, last minute cancellations... and the occasional "I was doing what this time?" So as time went on, we got better at what we did, and developed the now-familiar format that you now "enjoy"

For those of you that didn't know, I rented the loft here... for a long time actually. One thing I had to do was pack up on Salon days, so we'd have prims for the snack trays and such. Sera would IM me and ask if I was picked up... there was the time I showed up for salon in the maid uniform... eventually Viv started talking to me again. Of course, we don't talk about the Humvee incident anymore... If you can't kill your besties in vehicles, what fun is there to be had? And yes, we had a salon chair dash, and yes it was hysterical to see.

Viv thanked the Mayors of New Babbage, and rightly so. I do know that Mr Tenk and the EMs did a lot for us, and I know we had to play with the avatar count in Palisades once

I want to thank Jasper, for his work on so many of the crafts you guys enjoyed over the last three years. While he wasn't the only one who did, I know he did a lot of work just because he's a swell guy and providing the solid manly anchor to our staff :P

So now that I have talked for my allotted time, does anyone have any questions?

Ceejay Writer: Can we all take souviner bricks from the building tonight?

Elilka Sieyes: How does one determine the gender of an anchor?

Blackberry Harvey: Two prongs or three

Rhianon Jameson: It involves submarines and undercrackers.

Viv Trafalgar: Well, usually, they're underwater, and attached to a boat, so...

Ceejay Writer: (If they drag the bottom, male. If they hold the ship safely, female)

Viv Trafalgar: We hope after the grilling/questioning, you'll stick around - we have a very special guest today. But first, I want to say thank you to the Baron, who has begun plans for keeping the idea of Salon alive. You'll be hearing more about that soon.

Now, we are going to break slightly from salon tradition and invite you all to dance us out - We've asked Victor to DJ a little

Jasper Kiergarten: the box on the stage contains the craft. It's free

Ceejay Writer: THANK YOU SALONISTAS BOTH STAFF AND AUDIENCE FOR MANY YEARS OF GOOD MEMORIES!