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Archive for the ‘storytelling’ Category

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.

Ahhhhh . . . it’s webwhore drama time!! I’ve been waiting for someone to call out Alexa:

Reality and Faux Ho Bloggers on Carnal Nation

Kat’s response to that piece

Now that people are publicly airing their suspicions that AlexaRPD is a fraud, I’ll tell you why I started (and continued) linking to her and how/why my irritation with her escalated:

*I’ll pretty much link to any sexy-type blog provided one or more of these conditions are met:

• I’m hit up at the right time (when I have time to check them out & add them)
• they’re already sending me traffic (& I notice it on one of those rare days I check my stats)
• their blogs are told from a personal perspective
• they look like someone my readers/traffic would be interested in

Alexa’s blog qualified on all of those counts. I think the only post I read all the way through was her pet bunny post, which moved me. It also did something very few bloggers have the time or ability to do: it told a whole, coherent story. So . . . sex blog, nicely presented, obviously HAS traffic (and will continue to attract traffic) equals good link exchange for me. BECAUSE PART OF WHY I BLOG IS TO MAKE MONEY/attract members to my site.

At first I tried reading parts of a few more posts — the sexy ones — and while they do not do it for me and struck me as exaggerated and full of shit, I didn’t feel outraged even though I sensed the person writing the posts was manufacturing most, if not all, of the content in her imagination. I have HATED reading mean-spirited accusations about bloggers I’ve loved: that they must actually be men, that they couldn’t really possibly be for REAL, blah blah blah. I didn’t want to be one of those people and frankly I didn’t have the time or interest to read enough of her blog to gather “evidence” on her. I exchanged links with her to get traffic to my site and recognized that her blog is the kind that will have many loyal followers. While I may privately harumph at someone who just can’t ever get enough of throat-fucking (her specialty, if I remember correctly), obviously there are many wankers who eat that up.

I actually experienced what now sounds like a disproportionately higher level of irritation over how much she sounded a lot like another(?) Alexa who had a blog called A New York Escorts Confessions (also charged with being fake). I exchanged links with her once upon a time, too, even though that missing apostrophe right in her title DROVE ME FUCKING BATSHIT. I was way more aghast at her idiotic unwillingness to acknowledge and CORRECT her mistake (claiming instead that she did it on purpose for aesthetic reasons) than I was at her concocting or sexing up posts, but again — TRAFFIC. Those of you who blog purely for fun and attention and sparkling conversations in comments (GAG) may not get it (and be sputtering, “but . . . but . . . *I* deserve those sparkling comments more than FAKEY ALEXA does!!” which is probably true), but if I were to not accept traffic (and even PAY for it with reciprocal links and/or affiliate payouts) from sources I didn’t totally love and/or respect we wouldn’t be able to make a living on our sites. Seriously, whatever wrongs AlexaRPD has committed are incredibly small fries compared to the really foul and depressing shit I’ve dealt with from other “colleagues” so it wasn’t particularly troubling to me or something I felt like I needed to get to the bottom of.

Perhaps I’d have felt differently if she were claiming to be a camgirl, though, rather than an escort and former stripper. On the other hand, probably not. There are lots of sites I link to for money even though I don’t LIKE the people who run them or their work is not my cup of tea or who disseminate wrong/stupid information or whatever. I know some of you may find this appalling, but I only feel the slightest twinges of guilt over that. Like, that guilt is miniscule compared to the irritation, say, of a wayward hair in my sock pulling down on the skin between two of my toes. It’s not a whore sellout thing, either: today I saw that some of our very liberal friends took money from the government to provide training to the US Border Patrol to do some very UNprogressive freedom-eroding shit. When I think of all the civilians/non-sex workers who compromise their ethics for money (sometimes without a second thought) I really have a hard time feeling like I need to be a bigger boycotter and censor and ethical tightrope walker. I do not need to be up on the high horse other people insist on riding, instead I’ll stay down here with the common folk, shoveling shit and making money.

AlexaRPD follows me on Twitter (perhaps will be amended after this post to followED) and I have followed her back not just for the traffic exchange, but because she is constantly reading online and posts lots of pertinent sex worker-y news links before anyone else does. Is that one of the many red flags that she has way too much time on her hands to really be doing all the work and school and travel she claims? Totally. Does it make me want to unfollow her? No. I want to read the links she posts and I want the traffic. Didn’t much give a fuck.

But I *started* to give a fuck. The first time I started giving a fuck was when she posted a “Sex Ed” entry attempting to school  people on transgender and made some really glaring mistakes like writing as though all transsexuals are MTF (male to female) and just take estrogen for hormone therapy. When a transman got pissed about this in the comments, Alexa’s response wasn’t “OMG — thanks for pointing out to me that my information is completely wrong as applies to FTM transsexuals!” Instead it was hostile. Like the no-apostrophe defense, but much worse. I started writing comments but didn’t post them, realizing as the debate raged on in the comments and Alexa deleted sensible feedback without ONCE apologizing or hastening to correct her mistakes that THIS IS A PERSON WHO NEVER ADMITS TO BEING WRONG even when she should be totally fucking embarrassed to pretend that she’s right. And there is absolutely no point in trying to communicate with her. It irritated me so much, though, that I kept the comments I wrote (but didn’t post) in a draft in my mailbox. Here they are:

I don’t know if anyone else pointed it out as far as factual errors go (and I could be wrong too) but I *think* it actually IS uncommon — extremely — for people to be born with “well-defined sets of both genitals present”. I’m not an expert and I don’t think anyone could be, particularly when all of this stuff  (terms, expectations, scientific research) is still evolving BUT I can totally understand why people would get defensive, pissed and call you out on things. Like mostly-defaulting to talking about MTF transpeople and then not getting it when someone pointed out that FTM people obviously have a whole different HRT (hormone replacement therapy) plan. So as far as specific things to correct? The line “This might include surgical alteration, but may also include the commencement of hormonal treatments (estrogen, largely).” I don’t know if you meant to and didn’t get to it, or what. There’s no way to leave that as is and make it sound inclusive of FTM people and that definitely is a pet peeve of mine, that transwomen are fetishized and sensationalized and much more visible in the media like they are THE ONLY transpeople, while transmen are this invisible population — again where the people born with pussies are secondary to the people born with penises whose trials and tribulations and experiences are what all our discussions are built around with the biological cunt-owners being footnotes and exceptions to the rule instead of rulemakers themselves.

Being more specific about HRT *is* really important, I think, and it wouldn’t take that much space to add “usually estrogen & testosterone blockers for MTF and testosterone and progestin for FTM”. It’s really important for people to understand you’re not just ADDING hormones, but trying to counteract the ones you’ve already got.

So let’s call that Strike One for Alexa, the whole “never admits when she’s wrong” problem. With a cherry on top of “pretends she’s a ’sex educator’ when she is not”.

Strike Two was/is that she’s a shameless content thief and on top of that brags about all of the traffic she gets. I wouldn’t resent this if she got all of that traffic from her bullshit stories because writing those does take time and they ARE valuable to her readers regardless of whether or not they are true. Okay, I would still resent that a wee bit. But what REALLY pisses me off? That she gets and retains a lot of traffic from posting stolen  content on her erotic buttholes erotic facials erotic this and that picpost blogs. All of those shiny, pretty tumblers she’s so proud of are built entirely on her “collection” of photos she’s not in and didn’t take AND DOESN’T EVEN CREDIT to the real sites, photographers, or models except every so often on accident when the URL stamp hasn’t been cut off.

My ears are burning up just typing this, it makes me so mad. I remember seeing one of my friend’s faces smiling pretty with a load of cum on it in one of the pics Alexa posted with absolutely no mention of my friend’s name or her site and it just brought it home even harder to me that this person who pretends to be a sex worker, who pretends to be a sex worker advocate, is one of those people who thinks she has a right to capitalize on our bodies and our work for her own gain, to just TAKE our work like it’s free and redistribute. She’s like the guys on Craigslist who post that they have hard drives for sale with 437 gigs of porn on them that they’ve spent five years “collecting” or this one guy who wrote to me asking for a free membership to my site in exchange for the “collection” of menstrual porn he’d taken painstakingly snagged from here and there, by hook and by crook. When I angrily said no, he was like, “but I spent all of this time LABELING everything and putting them into folders! MY COLLECTION IS REALLY VALUABLE!”

Listen, I know most everybody’s been there before, very excited about the world wide treasure trove of free porn and bulletin boards and we want to show it off to people, our great taste in porn (or “erotic art”) and our amazing discoveries, but most of us had someone take us and shake us and remind us of a little thing called fucking COPYRIGHT. I am still a lot looser than other people when it comes to blogging on that — I don’t think you need to ask everybody for permission and think it’s fine to post stuff that’s out there for free already as long as it’s just a couple of samples AND YOU PROVIDE CREDIT to the original artist or a link back to where you found it or even just say “I wish I knew where this came from so I could credit the creators and models”. A blog-sized photo or three is like a quote from a book and seems to me fair use. But when your entire blog is comprised solely of uncredited porn? You’re just a thief. I’m apt to be forgiving when it’s someone who doesn’t know any better, but this Alexa person DOES know better, I’m sure of it, if she knows how to parse the language of 2257 laws while deliberately ignoring copyright infringement.

I am somebody who thinks copyright and trademark laws go a bit too far to the point where they constitute culture theft; I don’t want it to sound like I think every Joe Schmoe who posts a handful of pics on his rinky dink blog of his fave porn star should be prosecuted and fined thousands of dollars, but when someone has the audacity to brag about all of her traffic that’s built on stolen uncredited content, then she’s just a Big Asshole. And on top of that to have posted a portfolio that she claimed was of herself but was really photos of Princess Blue Eyez? That takes the theft to a whole other level and proves she’s a fraud (unless she is/was the model for that site).

Strike Three: it’s a petty one. But it was the day she told me I didn’t “get” what Twitter is for because I defended those of us who don’t feel the need/don’t have time to respond to questions tweeted to us. She is one of those “you owe a response to people” types who clearly doesn’t HAVE A REAL FUCKING JOB consuming all of her time the way we real sex workers do, those of us who realize it’s not our obligation to interact with and respond to people for free. Those of us who actually DO set a price on our time. And just goes back to Strike Number One of never admitting she’s wrong, which in this version is “there’s only one right way to do things (in this case use Twitter) and that is MY way”.

It all added up to me developing a blistering rage whenever I saw her saying similar things to other people, lecturing and chastising people who actually DO know what they’re talking about, who actually DO work their asses off and do jobs where we’ve sacrificed our privacy and taken real risks to do our work, all from this person who refuses to admit she’s wrong when it matters, even about little things. This person who doesn’t have the first clue or morsel of respect for our work, co-opting our work for his or herself thinking she can leverage her bullshit and ill-won popularity into a book deal or maybe just doing it because it greases his or her borderline personality disorder.

I’ve been wanting to say all of this for awhile now, but honestly didn’t want to be the one to step up and call her out on it because a person who has this much time on her hands could be the kind of person who will fuck with you indefinitely. And she certainly won’t learn anything from it or admit she’s wrong about anything so I just figured . . . WHY BOTHER?

Because who really cares if she’s a fake? Not her readers, apparently, who love an invisible woman with stolen pictures who never has a tired, stinky, or headachy story to tell about sex and ALWAYS sleeps naked and might invite YOU to a gang bang! And at first I was content to not care, either, until it wasn’t just about amusing herself with hypersexed tales to make ad sales to escort sites.

But I do care now. WE care. Those of us who pour our guts out for real, who HAVE our faces plastered with cum and other substances all over the internet, who are trying to make ends meet, who insist our time and our sex work is valuable and we should be compensated for it and our time in general, who HAVE gone to the schools we say we have, who are in some cases real educators . . . we care when you steal from us and then have the balls to teach people “sex ed” and gender ed and sex work 101 and scold us.

We care when you insinuate yourself into our virtual midst, insert yourself into our conversations and you can see US and take from US and pretend to be one of US . . . while you hide behind your charade. It’s fucking gross to those of us who are bonafide and verified. Those of us who have real work to do, posing for and/or shooting the pictures you steal, being real advocates for sex workers, actually TEACHING (as opposed to claiming we’re educators in interviews where your credentials are never verified), talking to real clients and customers (as opposed to simply amusing ourselves engaging in hot chat with freeloaders and teenagers who like our blogs). Yes, there are other anonymous sex worker bloggers some of whom I *adore* without question. But the thing is THEY NEVER DID THIS BULLSHIT ALEXA IS DOING. The content theft (to the EXTENT she does it), the hypocritical hand-slapping, and the offensive posturing.

To paraphrase a friend’s complaint, it’s creepy that this person knows who we are, but we don’t know who s/he is . . . and that person KNOWS he has an advantage over us when he talks to us . . . knows that he’s tricking us into treating him like the person he isn’t, like he’s one of us (and by “us” I don’t mean all of us are the same or do the same jobs or have the same identities). Alexa is basically someone who has succeeded in manipulating people into giving him free dances/handjobs/shows/phone sex.

*****

Well then . . . that about does it.

I feel a little ass-y about posting this, but kind of justified because I really wanted to emphasize the thing that matters more, I think, than creating a fake cum-hungry fantasy persona: it’s the hypocrisy of claiming to be a sex worker advocate WHILE YOU STEAL FROM THEM. The hypocrisy of “educating” people on transgender while you delete educational comments and corrections FROM PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY ARE. You know . . . stuff like that is bigger and more fucked-up than playing virtual dress-up. And I did want to provide an explanation for deleting my link to her and turning off all that ill-gotten traffic, so there you have it.

Note: I will not think less of you if you’re one of my readers or members and you continue to enjoy her blog (with a grain of salt please?) and I’m not saying that EVERYTHING on her blog is wrong, stupid or patently false; I’ve agreed with many things she’s said, and there WAS that awesome pet rabbit, Hansel. I definitely want to remind you, though, that all those pictures she posts? There are real people in them and real photographers who made them, so stop thanking Alexa for providing you with them, instead insist that she credits those in the images she shares so you can support (I hope) the people who ACTUALLY MAKE visual art/porn/erotica, not just steal it.

Oh man! I almost forgot that one time she told me I really *must* start waxing my twat, that my lovers would thank me for it. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you probably know that I don’t take kindly to advice on pubic hair removal, even when coaxed with a wink and the promise of someone else appreciating it. Nothing against waxing, which I’m open to, just not so open to being patronized by someone who crows about her eversmooth grooming but has never shown a photo of her biscuit, if she actually has one.

Edited to add: just noticed a midnight post from Mistress Matisse on the subject.

In first grade I was addicted to this story:

Every chance I got to go to the library and request that they set my friend and I up to listen to this, I WOULD. I remember it as an audio tape with a little paperback book hung in one of those baggies with plastic handles they had for mixed media, but now that my memory is jogged by this youtube video I wonder if it wasn’t a filmstrip because everything about this seems so familiar, but it’s probably just the narration and images, not the motion:

Anyway, I loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it and listened to it OVER and OVER again. I’ve always loved stories that take place at night, were dark, involved sleeping, criminals, loners, outsiders . . . dark escapism that’s sweetly menacing. It’s weird to look back on it now and see more adult elements in it and to read this New York Times review of the book and the author and the challenge of creating both art for children and erotica for adults. I’m glad I was exposed to The Three Robbers in the seventies in public school because I’ll bet that book would never see the light of day without a public lynching of the guy if it were to come out today. Nowadays you must either be 100% child-and-work-safe or resign yourself to being considered a 100% evil boundary-rapist. Take your pick. The only way people can fly under the radar is to be unsuccessful or too artistic for the general population to acknowledge you, and I’m sure this reissue of his out-of-print books is one of those things that will only be noticed by existing fans like myself.

I wish I had a magical blunderbuss to blow that bullshit right out of people’s assheads. But for now I’m going to add The Three Robbers to my wishlist so I can read it to my nephew(s — another’s on the way). WITH SOUND EFFECTS!

Attending our county convention yesterday as an Obama delegate counted as my social event for 2008; so what if I only struck up conversations with three people? That’s more action than this hermit usually sees.

Because socializing both bores and overwhelms me, I love getting my social time doing things with an agenda where there are rules guiding behavior and people in charge of reinforcing those rules. Parliamentary procedure definitely fills that need, and the lady I complained about here did an awesome job of keeping people in line, pushing them closer to the microphones, speaking coherently and just being generally awesome. She only used one acronym demanding clarification from an audience member which she explained without apology; you’ve no idea how much I admire that in a woman. While the acronym thing bugs me, I love her unapologetic down-to-business attitude.

It was both a relief and a disappointment discovering that the next caucus happens at the same time we’ll be attending the transgender conference where we’re on a panel so I couldn’t even try to get elected to move on; you wouldn’t believe how many people couldn’t grasp the concept of a thirty second speech, couldn’t keep their name tags swiveled around so people could see their names, and didn’t even understand why the timekeeper was waving her arms at them after they’d been droning on in a disorganized fashion for upwards of 90 seconds!

Anyway, it was fun being surrounded by liberal people getting a charge out of showing off their familiarity with Robert’s Rules of Order. I loved every minute of it, including the annoying parts/people. The Kucinich fanatics even made wonderful hyper-idealistic points and invited us to join in their futile, counterproductive bid to send as many “undecided” delegates on as possible. It was inspiring, it really was; in addition to preferring structured social events, I also like people-time that has an inspirational and/or change-making purpose, so I loved being in a crowd of people who are all excited about the positive changes our next president can bring and empowered to be part of that.

I wound up bonding with a lady who of course asked me what I do for a living. As usual, I first responded with the deliberately vague “webmaster”. With her lovely shining smile she probed deeper, asking, “so what does that mean exactly?”

I liked her and felt like she was a relaxed person, so I told her; “I make porn sites.”

Her smile stayed on, bright white and wide and her eyebrows perked up naughtily while she asked me to repeat myself. I laughed and teased her, “you heard me: PORN!”

She loved it, responded with fascinating disclosures about herself, and thanked me for making her day.

I have a feeling I’m going to regret posting these little video rants with my thoughts and reactions to the whole “Letters from Working Girls” debate. And you may very well regret listening to them; honestly, they probably won’t make sense to you unless you read the back story here:

*Audacia Ray’s reaction (and discussion in comments) to Letters from Working Girls

*The discussion on Bound, Not Gagged

*The Letters Collector herself on the debate (a nice try, but still didn’t settle my stomach)

Can I just apologize in advance for being a sputtering asshole? Oh, and I realize by posting this I’m probably just driving my own little slice of traffic to her; in spite of how my blustering sounds, that’s more than fine with me. Also, I am NOT speaking for anybody or on the behalf of anybody but myself.

You can DOWNLOAD MY WHOLE (.14 GB) RANT FOR YOUR IPOD or watch smaller chunks of it right here (and I promise the next vlog or audio post I make will NOT be so long & burbling):

PART I:

Download File

PART II:

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PART III:

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PART IV:

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PART V:

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PART VI:

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Oh, you know how I said I couldn’t find a picture of Susannah Breslin? I *did* find a video of her:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLe9JA3FI7I&rel=1]

She reminds me of Selma Blair (hot!) which makes me even MORE interested in finding out exactly what type of sex work I can hire her to perform. Watching her talk about a book of short stories she wrote and hearing her blur the line between truth and fiction to the point where I can’t tell if the book is, indeed, short (fictional) STORIES she wrote about “aberrants” like “midget porn stars” OR nonfictional essays about real people. Does anyone know? The promo piece reinforces my sense of her as someone who’s less interested in being true to people’s real stories in the sex industry and more interested in harnessing our curiosity about them to market entertaining tales of our perceived deviance for her own gain. Again, I don’t so much mind someone exploiting a resource (I’m not someone who thinks there’s no room in the world for pimps) as I mind someone bullshitting everyone about that being their primary objective.

And hey, I don’t want to make it sound like my own hands are clean; I’ve used a lot of the same tactics (or would if I could unclutter my mind long enough to APPLY the techniques of efficient exploitation), just not very well. So go on, everybody! GET that publicity! GET that traffic!! USE WHAT YOU’RE GIVEN!!! Wankers send you material? THAT IS BLOG FODDER! Someone wants to give you content without getting anything in return except the pleasure of putting it before an audience? TAKE it and USE it! Let Susannah Breslin be your guide!

Oh, and I wouldn’t argue with her about Susie Bright being a sex worker. The quickest reason I can give (which still probably doesn’t make sense)? She has confessed to her own personal fantasies that are so taboo as to be considered obscene by our government just to talk about them. Maybe Breslin has, too, though and I’m just not familiar enough with her (sex?) work to know.

Note: with the amount of time and energy I’ve wasted on this compared to the MAJOR stuff I ignore in my blog, you might think engaging in this little brouhaha is somehow more important to me than other things; it’s not. It’s just one of the few “discussions” I’ve been involved in lately and enjoyed, probably because it was mostly smart women doing the discussing (and yeah, Breslin is one of those women, too).

Here are three recent blog entries I appreciated from my fellow webwhores:

*Mina on the annoying aspects of advertising online for female companionship:

“My last attempt at hooking up with a chick led to her becoming utterly put out with me because I wouldn’t take a $40 cab ride to her house to immediately rape her. This, by our second conversation.”

*Mistress Matisse on her college education and lack of a degree. It was a blissful moment, realizing that I never wondered for a fucking second what kind of schooling Matisse did or didn’t have, and knowing that no one who reads her has to wonder whether or not she is EDUCATED. Schooling can be wonderful, but it’s also overrated; I treasure stories from happy, successful, smart people who dropped out of school somewhere along the way.

*Dacia questions Reverse Cowgirl’s co-opting of sex workers’ stories. It’s worth following all of the links, reading the comments and giving it some thought yourself. I think I vaguely recall Reverse Cowgirl’s blog going down for a period of time years ago (2003?) after which I abandoned reading it (shortly after discovering it, so I never got really “into” it). I do not relish the idea of someone who deletes blog history or is in the habit of abandoning her blogs compiling a bunch of stories by other people only to have them mysteriously disappear or be gathered up, deleted, and perhaps be republished in a book. Since she *is* a published author/more experienced (and, I assume, more ambitious) with publishing than your average hobbyist blogger, I’m curious if she has plans beyond the blogs for these stories she’s collecting and, if so, if she gets permission from the contributors for future/other uses (my guess is no, since the contributions are anonymous). Just thinking out loud and hypothesizing here.

*****

Okay, bedtime for me.

I’m ready for bed – my morning started out with a tragic nightmare regarding my sister’s health and pregnancy; I woke up on the verge of tears which really cast a nasty pall over the first part of my day.

Things did improve; I got some work done and we managed to get to one of the few local showings of Kinky Boots. It was a totally old-fashioned story and I loved almost everything about it . . . everything except that Lola didn’t get the girl (when the two of them danced it was ELECTRIC), instead taking the usual friendly-freak role by being the facilitator of romance rather than its recipient. It was nice to see a guy in good drag on the big screen with a mostly unmitigated masculine voice. I’m also a huge sucker for “saving dad’s factory through resourcefulness and the inspiring intervention of an unlikely hero” stories (Mousehunt comes to mind). I blame Mr. Rogers’ Picture-Picture (and the opening sequence of Laverne and Shirley) for my abiding love of scenes shot in factories — I *love* anything with yellowed conveyor belts and special machines tooled to do special things. LOVE it. I could watch that shit for hours. I wonder if there’s a DVD collection of Picture-Picture does Factories . . . if there’s not, there should be.

Honestly though, I love stories about entrepreneurs, small businesses, or people leaving the safety of society to take up an adventurous career. People on the brink of losing everything, barely making it, struggling to stay alive but still refusing to do something more conventional. It’s probably what drew me to stories of streetwalkers and other whores as a teenager and I just didn’t CARE that they were cautionary tales, what I cared about is that they seemed to be independent and on any day they could make $10 or $1000 while having to dodge all sorts of obstacles and dangers. I like anything where people are making a living by their own rules and their own schedule, or are flouting conventional wisdom. Another whore-like story that appeals to me is the type found in The Tattooed Man — I love the whole, “I’m going to make money and have adventure on the high seas!” thing. It’s just good old American-dream boot-strap stuff with a little more of an unsafe fringe element that appeals to me. It’s what I like about hard-boiled detective stories – they so often are barely eeking out a living, but THEY LIVE BY THEIR OWN RULES dammit. They are always just teetering on the brink. I love the tension and the uncertainty of that kind of lifestyle, so much so that I’ve established a similar existence for myself.

There is a thrill of uncertainty and danger as a webwhore that feeds on itself in an addictive way. It really is a gamble from both a financial and legal perspective, and the payoffs come in unpredictable ways. On the one hand, you have nearly-unlimited potential, but on a day-to-day basis a lot of times (at the stage I’m at now and have been for years) it really seems like the luck of the draw when it comes to how much money you pocket. It’s quite possible that I like teetering on the edge so much and living the fantasy life of the scrappy entrepreneur just barely making a living that I probably hold myself back because it’s just feels more fun and romantic this way than it would to have financial security. I love not knowing what will happen next, but feeling that a breakthrough could be just around the corner . . .