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Archive for January, 2009

One of the reasons I love reading Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer books is the food porn. Big boned babes and greasy spoons abound. Example from The Big Kill:

. . . .I went down the corridor to where a bunch of typewriters were banging out a madhouse symphony and asked one of the stenos where I could find Ellen Scobie. She told me that she had gone out to lunch at noon . . . . It took me about ten minutes to make the four blocks and there was Ellen in the back looking more luscious than the oversize T-bone steak she was gnawing on.

I’ve always wanted to shoot gluttonously sensual softcore porn, but never want to compromise my enjoyment of a good guilt-laden meal to do it. Pictures like these do inspire me, though (click images for sources):

Yesterday we were obligated by desire and blue skies to take a walk in the middle of what would be normal-people’s work day.

Right now I feel like taking a month long vacation. Not a real, TOTAL “vacation”, but a chance to actually catch up on work with some breathing room to get healthy. There’s nothing horrible going on in my life; everything is pretty awesome . . . except that I sometimes feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m feeling optimistic about it though now that I’m starting to understand why and commit to fixing the problem(s). I *really really appreciate* those of you who’ve taken the time and shared of yourself to suggest I look into getting my thyroid checked.

I could blog about this and all things related to it for hours, but now’s not the best time to do it justice and make it sound relevant to people who probably have no idea how relevant it really IS to at least 10% of the population plus all the people who love them and wonder why they’re cold, tired, fat, and crazy bitches with thinning hair and dry pussies. And the clueless, careless doctors who think it’s all in our heads and just prescribe anti-depressants without even bothering to test us.

I am mad, hopeful, tired and I have a good, holistic plan (which includes taking as many walks in the middle of the day as possible) to get myself into top form and be less crazy. Again, I say I’d love to have a month-long “vacation”, meaning a break from commitments but not a break from work. I’m not actually begging for that to fall out of the sky, I’m just semi-wishfully thinking while being partially thankful I can’t have one. Because I don’t really WANT one. I WANT to work. I’m just really fucking tired, but at least now I know WHY.

Okay. Maybe I *do* want to take a real vacation whenever I walk past someone who lives on shiny wheels:

Second photo of mountain from the top = Mt. Baker
Mountain in last two photos = Mt. Rainier aka The Mountain
(all shot yesterday)

Did you see the chick who kept mispronouncing “larynx” and “trachea” on American Idol?

Yeah, well I *loved* her. Because I could relate to her so much. Her seriousness and convictions and reaching for the right words (but getting them all wrong) and insisting upon precision with her responses to questions and bewilderment over the rules of the interview at the end. I loved her voice and she was the kind of smarT I recognize as my own.

I hate myself for watching that show, but almost feel like it’s my duty to know how we’re being taught about our own and other people’s value. If you have bad teeth, if you’re mentally ill, if you’re overweight, if you’re an aspie (see above), if you’re overweight AND wear tight or revealing clothing, if you’re borderline retarded, you’re fair game for the Idol freak show. All of America joins together not just to laugh at you, but to FEEL GOOD about laughing at you without compunction. It’s a family show! Everybody’s watching! It’s okay to laugh in someone’s face, punctuate every gaffe with sound effects, play songs like “Weird Science” when you walk into your audition if you’re a nerd (two scores I’d personally be pleased with — that song is googlyicious GOODNESS and that one nerd with bad teeth could have played Patrick Bateman’s long lost hillbilly cousin!). You can laugh right in someone’s face and still be considered kind as long as you chuckle “good lookin’ out!” and say, “awwww, you should never sing again but I can tell you’re a real sweetie!” as they exit.

They pretend American Idol is a competition only one person wins at the end, but the real reason it’s popular is because we ALL get to be winners at home each and every time they show us another fucking loser. The same people who’ve been targets of cruelty and ostracism for centuries — sissy boys with lisps, fat girls whose pants split, ugly people who dare to smile wide, and village idiots whose ears stick out and eyes are too close-set — willingly subject themselves to torment. Compared to them, the rest of us come out so far ahead! We are smarter, prettier, stronger and more likely to fit in than THOSE Americans. We wouldn’t make their stupid mistakes!

We just watched an episode (Yokel Chords) of The Simpsons that made fun of this phenomenon with Homer demonstrating exactly the behavior I’m talking about, pointing at the inbred hicks on tv, calling them stupid and feeling so good about himself in the process. I totally understand the appeal; in the internet porn industry I’m surrounded by people I subconsciously think of as easy targets (mostly my male “colleagues”); I feel like it’s my duty to be mean and ream them out, but maybe I actually waste time around them on webmaster boards because I’m a small person who wants to pretend she’s an advanced and sophisticated thinker. How petty and embarrassing is that?

It’s taking me a long time to put it into practice, but I really want to stop doing that. Awhile back we heard a comedian on the radio asking why it’s not okay to make fun of retarded people but people who are just plain STUPID are totally fair game. It kind of blew my mind because I like to think I’m one of those defenders of political correctness and sensitivity, but I totally have that double standard that I should be empathetic towards people who are developmentally delayed or have other identifiable REASONS for not being great intellectual thinkers, but it’s not only acceptable to mock and hate on stupid people — it’s like I sometimes feel it’s my fucking DUTY to be mean, angry and impatient with stupid and/or ignorant people. Like they have no excuse for being so dumb or lacking information. Granted, most of the time when I feel that way it’s because they’re acting like judgmental know-it-alls themselves or because they’re idiots writing to me with offensive demands, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything or make me a better person to behave the same way. I feel especially gross about it considering that under other circumstances — if I were in a different role doing a different kind of job (teaching, for example) — I would never allow myself to act that way and would be horrified by other people doing it. There are a bunch of ways I defend my behavior and even as I write this think it’s the RIGHT thing to do in certain circumstances. What I want is to understand what *I* get emotionally out of being an asshole to stupid people and decide whether or not it can accomplish anything positive next time I feel like calling someone a moron. It’s gotten so reflexive that nary a day goes by that I’m not screaming at someone for being a dumb-ass. Dumb fuck, dumb ass, crazy bitch, stupid shit, crazy SON-of-a-bitch, cocksucking moron . . . apparently they’re everywhere I look and it doesn’t really make me feel good to label people that way everywhere I look, even if I only do it in my head or muttering under my breath at the grocery store, “MOVE, you stupid shit-for-brains, MOVE!!”

I wonder why I’ve gotten worse about this as I’ve gotten older. Is it because I’m more socially isolated and feel less connected to other people? Is it because I’m more and more aware of my own limitations and am just projecting my own feelings of inferiority? Is it because I have some hormonal stuff going on that’s making me more of an asshole than I really am? Is it because I know that I’m actually one of those stupid hillbilly nerds they make fun of on television? Whatever it is, I’m going to try to be less of a shithead and recognize that the only person I am in competition with is myself.

We woke up early to watch the Inauguration yesterday; I turned the television on as fast as I could and pretty much started crying immediately. I’m a sucker in general for ritualized ceremonies, but a lot of things made it extremely emotional for me. There’s all the obvious stuff of watching a momentous, proud, hopeful, inspiring piece of history, but other stuff, too. Like remembering watching Reagan’s Inauguration with my grandpa when I was a little girl. Like seeing two little girls who love their dad and thinking of my own dad and my sister and I when we were their ages. Seeing the former presidents and vice presidents and first ladies from my lifetime walking (or hobbling) in or not being there at all (like my dad and my grandpa) was like looking at a timeline with my own lifespan clearly marked on it. It’s not a long line, even if I’m lucky and only a third of the way through it. I didn’t think of it this way on a conscious level until hours later and realize that part of what I cried about was my own mortality.

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Then I had a doctor appointment. That made me feel even more like a rusting machine getting ready to be dismissed from operation. It wasn’t a good experience and by the end of last night with money stress, the emotions of the morning, sleep deprivation and all of the symptoms I went to the doctor for in the first place, I was really ready for a good night’s sleep and too wound up to jump right into it.

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Check out my Inauguration Day tweets if you want some more of my reactions to yesterday. Apparently I’m the only person who loved the poem. Other people thought it was robotic — not a word I’d have chosen to describe it, but even if it was I totally love robots so maybe that’s why I liked it. At first I thought her delivery was too contrived, but a few lines into it I just heard the words/saw the moments she captured and thought it was fucking brilliant and spot-on. I burst into tears when she said the last nine words of this chunk:

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

I complained yesterday about not hearing anyone comment on the poem (and felt totally annoyed seeing people walking away from the ceremony before she even started; these must be the same assholes who go to watch fireworks displays but leave before the finale because they want to “beat the traffic” but maybe I’m being unkind and they all just have small bladders and/or diarrhea) but now I’m glad I didn’t hear any chatter about it on CNN or online (I know it’s out there, I just haven’t looked for it or read it). I don’t know anything about poetry, but I do know I love Walt Whitman and I do know he loved Lincoln and I do recognize nods to Whitman in yesterday’s poem and that all of that fits into the deliciously morbid Lincoln-channeling going on with Obama being the first to use the Lincoln bible and doing all of those other following-in-Lincoln’s-footsteps black-cat-crossing things.

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We spent most of today shopping since we had to make the journey to suburbia for Delia’s laser hair removal appointment. It was so much fun hearing people, especially kids, talking about Obama (kid pointing at books & magazines: “look, Mom! It’s Barack Obama!”). I hate that I can’t shake the feeling of impending doom, though. I know other people have to be feeling it, too. Still, everything’s shimmery and sparkly right now . . . very storybook-like (even with the oath do-over). Watching the ceremony yesterday I did halfway feel like I was watching a pre-pre-pre-prequel to Star Trek Next Gen. Like everything good could really come true someday and all of the buildings and monuments were bad backdrop paintings of futuristic architecture.

I don’t regularly fantasize about the White House as a super-glamorous place and never have felt like the people living there were royalty the way people felt about the Kennedy years. It’s kind of exciting to experience that now; I can’t help it, thinking about those girls moving in there and having slumber parties. I’m totally sucked into it. The allure of a lot of chick things (weddings) escapes me but stories involving orphans, boarding school, or preteen girls spending the night in museums or moving into the White House are always going to capture my imagination. It’s almost as good as eating buckets of mashed potatoes and gravy, imagining Sasha and Malia safe and happy, the most famous little girls in the world ensconced in THE WHITE HOUSE with closets full of pink clothes and barbies and books and halls to run in and a prissy nanny who tells them stories and feeds them cucumber sandwiches.

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I’ve got some Obama-themed pictures to post from my latest members-only gallery but haven’t had a chance to make promos so it’ll have to wait. In the meantime you can check out Delia’s samples if you’re not a member.

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Another sad thought I had yesterday was for our friend whose mom just died. I imagined him and AmberLily dealing with their loss and this Inauguration going on at the same time. How weird it would be to feel like everyone in the world is paying attention to this ceremony while they’re distanced from it by having a huge personal transition and ceremonies of their own to attend to. When big events coincide with personal crises it can be so isolating and bizarre. I haven’t wanted to call them, but I’m definitely thinking of them and hoping for the best for them.

I decided to experiment with having auburn hair & a tiny bit of blonde foiled into my brunette. It’s not really as bright as it looks in the picture, but it’s still remarkably different from what I usually ask for. Brunette still trumps all, though, so I’ll be going darker/less red again next time around though I’ll definitely trust my new hair girl to do whatever she thinks is best (which she says is another foil adding in low lights of mahogany).

I do think the auburn suits me a lot better than blonde ever did and looks better with my skin, but it still doesn’t feel like “me” the way dark brown does or even blonde did at times or the way I imagine silver/grey will in the future.

In other boring facelift blabbering, I shaved off my armpit hair and the pubes on my thighs and labia, and I’m in the process of picking out some new eyeglass frames; it’s tough, because there are a lot of them I like and I would love to wear glasses more often (the ones I have now are an old prescription so I don’t see perfectly with them). To make choosing easier, I’m fairly limited in options because of the strength/thickness of my lenses. No wire frames, squared-off or open-bottomed styles for near-sighted, astigmatic Trixie.

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That’s all I have time to blog about right now; I’ve got period cramps and a lot of stuff to do (editing photos and videos we shot this week and building promos that NEED to be done asap) before the weekend when we have shows and chat scheduled. I’d also really like to take some time out to go see a movie.

My response to Oprah’s team dulling down the Real Housewives of Orange County:

A post made by Trixie on her phone:

MP3 File

Note: I didn’t see the show and am only going on the piece I linked to. Also, it’s not that I don’t think men — particularly gay men — are capable of being brilliant stylists and all of that, the part I hate is the whole “Ladies! COVER UP, will ya? Jesus, you fucking skanks — no one wants to see that much of your old-ass bodies, okaaaaaaaaaay?” attitude. And seriously, if someone doesn’t have style that sets them apart from the people they hang out with, do you really think that personal style is something you can THRUST upon them?

We lost power at our house for a couple of seconds today because of the wind; it almost seems freakier when the sun’s out and it’s blowing than if the skies were dark and ominous. Blue skies + windstorms = the pink goth of weather.

Though we live northwest of/near Seattle, the weather is totally different here with a lot less rain. We’re lucky to have big windows facing south so in January and February we can sunbathe naked. Inside, unless you have fur:

I took these pictures in our backyard after going to the store where the power was out. According to the locals I heard talking, part of town was out of electricity because a transformer blew, a tree fell/knocked down lines, AND someone crashed a car into a pole. Our wind is a force to be reckoned with!

Next month we’re planning to spend some time shooting closer to my hometown, in the area where (some of) Twin Peaks was filmed. I really wanted to commission someone to sew a waitress costume to mimic the ones they wore at the diner in the series, but I messed up the specs on the auction I created and didn’t want to pay for something four months in advance of a time that would be too late for the look/time of year I wanted. Maybe next year. For now we’ll try to capture a little of the vibe/local color without being crazily ambitious. Someday I would love to have the resources to get a bunch of our friends and fellow-Peaks-fans together for a couple of weeks to shoot some tribute porn. Someday.

My mom passed her DNA for knockers down to me and also taught my sister and I how to deal with the problem of having one nipple/areolar complex erect and bumpy with the other one soft:

One time as we were about to leave a public restroom my mom noticed she had one stiff nipple and paused before exiting to stimulate the other one over her shirt so they would match. She did try to get bras and shirts that would prevent them from being super obvious, but when those failed to do the trick (you’d need armor to guarantee 100% no-poke-through) she felt compelled to make both of them stick out if one was being stubborn anyway. Nipples do get hard sometimes when you pee so . . . yeah. I hadn’t just peed in the photo above, but I’d given one boob more attention and didn’t realize how obvious it would wind up being in the picture. Clearly I am not as conscious of these things as my mom is. Or maybe I’m just not as sensitive? Hmmm . . . well, there’s some suggestive kinkiness for the portion of my audience with a special interest in big boobs, nipples, and . . . other things.

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I would love to stay up and finish editing this set of photos for members, but it will be better if I get back in bed and disconnect. PMS is in full effect and I woke up an hour too soon. I got a late start this week when I got a headache Monday and spent Tuesday recovering and trying to prevent more headaching. Now the hormones are kicking my ass and making me act/feel like a monster so I’m going to call the amount of work I did today “good” and say goodnight. Tomorrow members can see the rest of the curves and long socks and a sparkly dildo and furry beaver and underarms (not to be hairy much longer, though I’m sure I’ll grow it back out again in the future, but that’s why we shot this set in black and white: to really show off my bush).

I started taking piano lessons when I was about nine years old. My teacher, Joan, didn’t believe in using metronomes and always had long, fancy nails even though pianists aren’t supposed to. At some point during the first year of lessons, she told me that music is really all about MATH.

No math = no music. A huge revelation for me as a kid. It’s a big truth that’s never left me. At first my feelings about it were a little conflicted; it was sort of stressful (”I’m so bad at fractions!”), but realizing that math is the foundation of music (or at least one doorway into building and understanding it) never sucked the romance or beauty out of it. It never made it dry to me. It can be invisible enough that you don’t actually NEED to know it or think about it for it to be in there. That lesson primed me to notice as years went by that math and science are built into nature and art and our insides. That the basics of them are intuitive, like rhythm, but the more you know about the math and science of something, the better your music or art or appreciation of those things can be.

Knowing that art is really science has been a solace to me — art isn’t reserved only for a few people who are divinely inspired. It can be orderly: accessed and created systematically. With simple formulas. With a wide variety of tools mixed with individual perspective, personality and tastes to make it seem unique and magical, disguising the numbers in the craft of it.

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I shot a set of pictures of Delia wearing some hot Hello Kitty shorts on Friday night and the photos are all jacked up. I’m a long way from understanding the science of photography; I *like* numbers, but they don’t stick in my head very well so even though I’ve read about how cameras work and how OUR camera works I still don’t have it committed to memory or know how to manipulate light and settings quickly to achieve what I want. I have to just walk around and fiddle with things until I mostly-accidentally happen onto something lovely. Most of the good pictures I take are the product of luck and shooting A LOT without fully comprehending what I’m doing. I recognize what looks good and beautiful and erotic to me (or at least halfway decent) and what looks bad to me and have a few basic practices for making the former (especially in the “halfway decent” category) and avoiding the latter, but my technical skills are pretty basic.

All of the pics looked dark to me so I bumped the ISO up to 1000 or 2500, I forget now (hence the graininess) and the speed down to 25 or 30 — they still looked dark for some reason; I was letting the camera auto-focus (selecting the area to focus on myself with these little movable box thingies; I forget what Nikon calls that function but it didn’t seem to be working well on this particular night) and adjust the aperture itself until I decided to do a closeup and switched everything to manual (because it balks when we ask it to autofocus macros); suddenly everything was WAY TOO BRIGHT and I had to change the shutter speed. The only thing I can think of is that the camera wasn’t doing a good job of automatically adjusting the aperture and when I switched to manual and adjusted it myself then everything changed. It sucked because we wanted these pics to be bright.

The older I get, the more I see that MOST working artists — writers, photographers, graphic designers, sculptors, painters, musicians, etc. — are just people who’ve chosen to do that kind of work. That the only thing that sets them apart from the rest of us is the amount of time they put into their art and confidence they have in devoting themselves to it without worrying whether or not a jury of peers think they deserve to make money on it. Very few artists are people who actually possess something innate that the rest of us don’t have; most of it is taking the time to learn and apply information that’s available to everyone (or anyone with the resources to do a little research) and then investing money in the right tools and lots of time in practicing. Sometimes I think the most successful artists are the ones who are actually LESS gifted and too stupid/overconfident to recognize that there are other people (usually making zero dollars on their art) who are WAY more talented. Maybe the only way to be a successful “artist” is to NOT be great — to not complicate shit with too much vision, originality, or diverse techniques and just work from simple formulas to make things that are easily recognizable and accessible to the masses. See also Adaptation. If your work brings other people pleasure does it really NEED to be super duper excellent?

The older I get, the happier I am with shooting for mediocrity. Even mediocrity requires a lot of hard work (for me, at least). Mediocrity is attainable without being a given; you can stand out and make a decent living in a field simply by being one of the relative few to 1) choose that field, 2) commit to it for a number of years, and 3) make yourself known. All the better if you’re willing to take emotional and financial risks and make sacrifices for your work/”art”. The happier you are with mediocrity the wider your success. I’ve slowly shifted my focus of “pride” away from “talent” and pinned it on “work”; you can’t be proud of having good taste or being born with certain attributes making you better suited than most to doing one job or another. Those are only things you can be THANKFUL for. The things you can actually be PROUD of are hard work, dedication and defying convention to choose happiness. To call yourself an artist as soon as you choose to be one — to make it your job — rather than waiting until you imagine other people think you are good enough to deserve that label. Those are the people I admire more and more, the ones who are brave & devoted enough to create some form of art (even if it’s just fair to middlin’) and are savvy enough to make it a business.

I used to think having to work hard at something or take a lot of time to make something acceptable was something to be ashamed and embarrassed of. If it wasn’t easy it meant I wasn’t good at it. Now I realize that’s total bullshit (even if I still FEEL that way sometimes). The strategic choices and commitments you make to invest work in things that make you happy, better, more skilled, or even just capable of seeing you should make a different choice (I’ve always believed that quitting is something to be proud of; that whole “quitters never win” line is such a crock of shit). The time you spend allowing yourself to suck ass — IMMERSING yourself in sucking ass and slowly filling in the void of your ignorance with knowledge — just so you can become mediocre at something you love and then keep working to try to improve upon that. Beyond mediocrity there are so few people who are actually able to recognize the difference between mediocrity and greatness, there’s no reason to beat yourself up if you’re not capable of becoming that elite.

Being a “jack of all trades, master of none” ROCKS. It’s fun, it’s challenging, and I don’t love any one thing enough to give up all the other stuff. So I really have to be satisfied with mediocrity, slow progress, and making balanced choices to devoting little bits of time here and there to different things I love. Like making flash cards to learn photography stuff. You’re never too old for flash cards. I’m not, anyway.

I am mediocre at so many things, and have managed to balance (with great mediocrity) such a gigantic shitload of different kinds of work that I deserve to be quite proud of myself and my extrao
rdinary mediocrity. I feel so blessed to be in a position to dabble so widely. Lucky lucky lucky, and proud of myself for creating a notable percentage that luck by my choices. For recognizing my luck and exploiting it to the best of my limited ability.

Some of us are able to do our work just because we’re lucky enough to have the resources to buy tools, to live in an environment filled with inspiration and/or to be close to people who make beautiful subjects and do most of the art/work for you.

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I love arranging forkfuls of food. Ones where I have the perfect ratio of one thing to the other(s). Mashed potatoes to gravy to meat. Raisins to flakes. Heavens to Betsy. It doesn’t have to be fancy, the formula just has to be right. Everything pleasingly arranged in relation to each other. I will never be a good cook because I don’t want to practice how to be; that’s Delia’s thing. It’s my job just to love eating, every day, tasting and swallowing over and over and saying thank you, honey.. And to figure out how to arrange camera settings like food on a fork, adjusting hole-sizes, timing mechanisms, and digitally tweaking things in perfect relation to the kind of light shining on my girlfriend.