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I just used some of my webcam money to subscribe to one of my favorite radio programs ever, Hearts of Space. Nevermind the ill-advised acronym (so typical of nerds to make a hilarious mistake like that, god love ‘em).

Since our porn business operates on a subscription basis, it’s interesting to research other subscription-based internet products, their price points, and comparing the offerings. I loved reading the HOS: WHY PAY? page. Like porn, music is something you can get free online in a million places. Even when people don’t ask you to justify charging for it, many of us feel we MUST explain it (I’ve been criticized by adult webmasters for the times when I’ve disclosed similar information and confronted those questions when maybe I should leave them alone). It’s inspiring to read the way Hearts of Space explains some of their business approach (and costs outsiders don’t comprehend without being taught) because it’s so firmly rooted in a clear vision, one that I know DELIVERS an experience I’ve never gotten from any other radio programming. There is a certain personality, there are seductive, hypnotic voices I’m attached to, and there is a well-planned journey offered by HOS.

HEARTS of SPACE PRODUCER STEPHEN HILL’s CAREER seemed to take a sharp detour in the early 70’s when he abandoned his architectural career and opened a recording studio. . . . In retrospect, Hill realizes he never really left architecture. He simply became a sound architect who learned to build his castles on the air. “Architects create environments with physical materials.
I do it with sound.” - Stephen Hill

It’s also interesting to observe my own thought process in deciding what kind of subscription to get: I chose the $13 a month all-access plan because I don’t feel like I can shell out the money for a year even though I know it would save me money in the long run. Also, The internet radio channel only (no archives or playlists) probably would’ve been good enough for me, but if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to try to figure out how to upgrade mid-month. Out of laziness/a desire to be efficient with my time and not necessarily need or probable usage, I chose the more comprehensive membership. I know people go through similar though processes when deciding which membership plan to get for our sites.

Hearts of Space is an inspiring model of how to create and sustain and love a “product” that’s not personalized for each individual listener but still manages to feel intimate even though it’s mass-delivered and not even live (except maybe one hour a week, I think).  It speaks of a void and manages to fill it –inside of me and outside of me — at the same time. I’m fascinated by people and groups who design and deliver stimuli producing what appears to be a relatively mundane experience (compared to, say, a roller coaster ride in a theme park or a provocative theatre piece, etc.) that manages to infiltrate people’s lives by being constantly accessible in private, demanding little of them but providing addictive stimulation. A little like a favorite diner or coffee shop. Something offering sustenance you could get elsewhere, but elsewhere just wouldn’t be QUITE right. I believe there’s something about the earnestness of the proprietors to deliver an actual EXPERIENCE they’ve envisioned in rich detail and feel in their own bones that makes Hearts of Space , some bookstores, a couple of Indian and Thai restaurants in Tacoma, and some porn sites exceptional.

I love music and I love feeling distant connections to people, but it’s impossible for me to listen to voices or most music and WORK at the same time. “Space music” offers me the kind of escape and transcendence I long for. It’s a spiritual salve for me that allows me to imagine journeying into a meaningful peaceful nothingness of wind and colors and stars and the smell of ozone. It gives me a lot of the feeling I get from imagining my ideal forms of church or prayer or sanctuary or space travel. It’s like having a lucid flying dream. That’s totally worth $13 a month to me. “Greetings, space fans . . . “

There’s a vibe on Hearts of Space that I’d like to infuse my own site with – that I’ve always wanted to be there and have maybe succeeded in transmitting some of the time (not the SAME vibe, but a quality or peculiarity of vibe). I think it will be helpful to listen to HOS on a daily basis to remind myself of the possibilities and how personality and vision and voices (even in very limited doses, more often without words) can combine in powerful, seductive, and soothing ways. How to make transportation out of your aesthetics and values to take people to a place they recognize as one where their belief systems make perfect sense. Or freewheeling careless nonsense. Where you look around and feel yourself and even though nothing has changed, you’re like, “THIS is it, what I was trying to remember that was bothering the tip of my tongue.”

Like, fucking psychic alignment, man!

Click here for an older post about new age music, porn and more.

*****

I know, you’re all like . . . post some porn, woman!! Are you losing your mind?

I can only answer in a predictably crazy way by insisting that no, I’m totally on the verge of genuine SANITY, motherfuckers!! Seriously, like, all is about to be REVEALED!!

I’ll try to post something porny and down-to-earth for you soon, mkay? I’ll TRY.

I am always trying. I don’t know if that’s apparent or not, but it’s true.

I love casinos.

It’s pretty rare that we go to them (and we have LOTS of nice ones on reservations in Western Washington where the tribes actually make decent money off of them instead of simply being exploited by outside corporations which is what happens in most states) and the amount of money I spend is trifling, but I still love walking around in them and being absorbed by the noises and orderly rows of tables and machines.

A few nights ago I needed to get out of the house so I went with Delia to her 12-step meeting. Meaning I went along for the ride, dropped her off, and headed to the casino by myself. Delia doesn’t like wandering around aimlessly in casinos the way I do so I really got to enjoy spending an hour there with my free Sprite, completely overwhelmed and unsure what to do with myself (but in a good way). Eventually I made a $7 donation to the tribe via penny and nickel slots after I figured out how to get and use their club card.

I allowed myself to be completely unhurried and take as much time as I needed to make and execute the simplest of decisions, like whether or not I should remove my club card from the lanyard so that it wouldn’t be dangling across the screen or tying me up by the neck to the machine. Seriously. I spent ten minutes trying to figure that out and get the card OFF the clip. I am not very bright or coordinated, especially when there’s a lot of distractions around so it’s a huge relief sometimes to be completely alone with nobody (I know) watching and just allow myself to sink into being massively stupid, completely enveloped in the casino atmosphere where you’re allowed to publicly do nothing but throw money away while you sit on a stool and look at little pictures of monkeys and fruit and BARBARBAR spinning around. For hours. I suppose that’s pathetic, but it relaxes me to feel no pressure. To not have to try to be smart. To be hidden between the slot machines that are all taller than I am.

I love casinos enough that I would throw much more money away in them if I could afford to. Enough that I can envision myself having a serious problem, especially if I ever learned to confidently play cards which is one of those perfect-for-Trixie ways of being around other people, in a completely structured semi-social exchange where the object isn’t to chat, but to play and to win. Everybody has a clearly defined role. There are RULES. I like that.

But I don’t have money to throw away so after I (ever so slowly) spent my seven dollars I wandered around looking at the steakhouse menu and the cafe menu and the people and the machines and the gift shop. And while I looked at the two pound steak special it occurred to me that it would be very convenient if someone offered me money for sexual favors. That I would DO IT without hesitating, return to consume my blowjob-earned steak, and spend the rest of it on slots.

On the Golden Girls, Blanche referred to buying things with her body as “using nature’s credit card”. I wonder: what is the percentage of women who 1) want things and 2) immediately scan the room for men who can provide the means for procuring the things that they want. I imagine it’s pretty high. It seems perfectly natural. And of that number, how many would use “nature’s credit card” to seal the deal?

Of course I wouldn’t do that at the casino. Probably not. Unless I did become addicted to gambling.

When the thought first (naturally) crossed my mind it seemed totally logical and if it would’ve only taken 20 seconds for an opportunity to present itself then YES, I would have done it. But after a minute reality set in and I realized I wouldn’t have time to do that before Delia’s meeting was over. I don’t know enough about the casino to know what the risks are. I have no desire to be publicly humiliated there or never allowed to return. I’m not sure what safety precautions to take. And the whole thing would be so much messier and uncomfortable in real life than in my imagination. Plus the guy would probably offer way less money than would be worth it. Plus I really didn’t feel like talking to anybody.

But I didn’t look “hot” so I’d have probably performed, for example, a low-priced handjob with my tits out for groping if I knew it was safe and the guy didn’t want a big long conversation. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to ever know for sure that something is safe. And I hate the idea of someone following me around, eyeballing me before they make an approach, or worse, following me around afterward when I’m trying to enjoy the money I earned.

It’s much better to be a lone stranger in the casino that the security guys suspect is autistic rather than a prostitute. I didn’t feel like smiling at anybody or talking. I veered away from a chunky black guy earlier (before my whore light bulb dinged outside the steakhouse) who seemed to be pursuing me; in hindsight he might have been a perfect mark for that handjob exchange. But at the time I just wanted to sit alone on a stool at a slot machine without being hemmed in by people on both sides.

At the printing company where I used to work there was an autistic guy working in the art department. He scanned logos and cleaned up the artwork. I briefly worked there too on the night shift. Sometimes our boss would look at me working, obsessively sharpening the edges of black, shaving off pixels that shouldn’t have been there, and would complain with a laugh that I worked exactly like Bill (the autistic guy). I took it as a compliment even though she didn’t mean it that way. Even though she liked Bill better than she liked me, what she meant is that it had been revealed to her that I wasn’t so fucking smart; I was actually slow and retarded with no clue how normal people do things.

Everybody liked Bill. So did I, and when someone got in his way when he was headed somewhere or tried to stop him and engage him in conversation and he’d pointedly stare straight past them above their heads and try to GET AROUND THEM, to steamroll straight past them, I totally understood what he felt like. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but very few people respect how we want to go directly from point A to point B without someone interfering with our straight line. GET OUT OF MY WAY.

I think it’s that desire to connect the dots (going from *not* having something I want to procuring it) in a very direct way that makes turning a trick in a casino to get money for a steak and more time at the slots seem perfectly logical and also anathema to me. It’s not a moral or ethical issue to me at all. It’s not natural to me to think about it in those terms. The notion of NOT doing it because it’s “wrong” is complete nonsense to me. There are plenty of reasons not to do it, but that’s not one of them.

Anyway, I had a good time by myself at the casino. I used to hate public smoking, but now that it’s illegal (except on reservations) it’s been so long that I actually sort of welcomed the stench and that whole Vegas smell. I was dizzy by the time I left.

After having the worst sales day on Sunday I’ve ever seen, I changed our Directv package to the cheapest one (that’s still not “cheap”, but anyway). I also scaled back our Netflix from five discs out to three and got excited about a return to listening to This American Life and music more often. And maybe having the attention span to watch entire movies again — something we’ve all but lost in the past couple of years of television immersion.

Some of the cable shows we love best are The First 48, Cold Case Files, Mad Men (swoon), Deadliest Catch, and Intervention — apparently we aren’t alone in being addicted to that show because I got a bunch of tweets in response to my announcement yesterday from people who couldn’t stand to give up Intervention.

I first started watching Intervention alone and totally felt guilty and ashamed watching it, like only a sicko would watch an hour of a stranger’s family’s most private, horrifyingly personal, lowdown moments. I’d record them on our DVR and wait to watch them alone until once when my sister was over she saw it in the list of shows and was like, “oooh! Let’s watch Intervention!!” The concept of all of us watching the show together embarrassed me, like it’s something you should only watch in private (which of course isn’t true).

It’s not that I think the show is bad — I think it’s awesome, and since then Delia and I have watched it together many times — it’s just really intense and weird. I do think it’s informative (I love that they focus on all kinds of addictions and sicknesses from gambling to OCD to Diabetes to eating disorders) and helps build empathy, but it still feels wrong to watch it for entertainment. But we do, I guess. One person tweeted to me that she thinks that show is depressing with a capital “D”. And it’s true, that’s the embarrassing part — why would we watch something totally depressing for FUN? I guess there are a million awkward answers to that question.

*****

One of the first Interventions I watched was repeated last night and pissed me off in a giant way. The family seemed more concerned with Cristy’s stripping than with her drug use, like the STRIPPING was THE sign she was way out of control (and what a great marketing hook, too!). Whenever I see that crap it disturbs the fuck out of me the way people alienate someone who already feels totally isolated and judged by being TOTALLY FUCKING STUPID about sex work. I’m not saying that the sick women on Intervention would choose sex work if they weren’t in desperate situations, I’m just saying that their friends and families are usually so fucking retardedly focused on that part of it that they contribute to the problem and I’ve never seen that addressed in any healthy way on the show (though some of the families seem to have it in a more rational perspective).

It reminds me of a story I saw about a missing woman, maybe on America’s Most Wanted, told mostly from the perspective of her “loving” parents who OVER and OVER said they knew she would NEVER have become a prostitute in Las Vegas of her own volition and that her evil boyfriend HAD to have MADE her do it and caused her to disappear. They said stupid shit over and over again about how they knew their darling daughter would never have chosen this life for herself and how badly they wanted her back so she could be her old innocent self again. Of course she was probably dead so it probably doesn’t matter, but all I could think is that if this woman WAS alive and in a bad situation and saw her parents saying that shit, she’d probably rather whither up and accept her current lot than think she could ever live near them and their unaccepting ignorance again. People are so hyperfocused on how degrading they believe sex work always is that they can’t fucking think straight, like these parents who seemed unable to recognize that their daughter willingly chose this boyfriend AND sex work in Vegas, and that the real sad and scary thing was that someone — possibly the boyfriend — probably killed her for it. Instead they went on tv, rejected her choices (that probably came from wanting to get away from their moronic idealized perception of her) and shat all over her.

This is why I need to stop watching TV. Because this crap HAUNTS me! And I haven’t even said anything about the MOST DISTURBING episodes of Intervention and America’s Most Wanted! Gah!

Do they have Intervention on DVD?

No!! I need a break!! NO MORE INTERVENTION!!!!

PS – Ken is totally our favorite interventionist.

A few samples from my Friday the 13th / Valentine’s Day gallery:

Am I superstitious about black cats and Friday the 13th and all of that? No. If I am, it’s in the opposite way — my rational mind rejects those superstitions and my personality seems to overcompensate by becoming GIDDY over the prospect of walking under ladders and attaching positive meaning to supposedly unlucky days/events/portents of doom. So yeah . . . I’m irrationally attached to those things that superstitious people consider unlucky.

I’m happy to be home again after being gone for four. We didn’t get much shooting done, but the trip and time we took was worth it not just for the pictures, but the time to ourselves, off cam. We haven’t spent a night away from work (aka home) together since . . . well, since well before September. I don’t think this trip totally counted as a vacation, but it was a reminder that we should try taking one every so often (I know, it seems like I’m always saying that and never fully committing to doing it).

We also spent a few hours on Friday visiting my mom including eating at Ken’s Truck Town (yes, we like eating at truck stops; why did they take the Monte Cristo off the menu?) and visiting the new casino. I was surprised she wanted to check it out since my stepdad had a serious gambling problem and my mom was initially vehemently opposed to that casino opening (not because she’s still with him — she’s not — but having lived with someone with a gambling addiction she’s not into casinos at all). We all stood around like we were in a foreign country trying to decide what to do with the $3.75 I’d split between the three of us to put in the slot machines. I’d have blown more money there (I consider it a donation/reparations . . . AND mindless fun) but neither my mom nor Delia were interested once we lost the $21 we won.

*****

We don’t have any special plans for tonight. Tomorrow and Monday (President’s Day) we’ve got webcam shows and chat scheduled so I think we’ll just do a little work and relax this evening. Delia picked up a chile-flavored dark chocolate bar for us to share.