Week 38 (3)

Housekeeping (redux)
Saturday, 22:21

So; so. The counter I’d been using had been slow, and clunky, and it crashed Netscape 4.x, but it was free, and gave me referral logs of a sort. Rather, it used to. But now it won’t even do that, so why bother. Besides. Their insistence on playing “O Fortuna” along with the banner ad on the stats page was really starting to get on my nerves.

And I really don’t need to be obsessing over how many people are clicking through on which days and at what times, or even from where. Especially since a great deal of you appear to have merely clicked through from the asstr-mirror.org list of recently updated files. —If you’re just looking for unadulterated smut, and not discussions of same, apologies; you can read some of mine, or bounce back and try something else. Hell, go browse Kristen’s Collection; you can’t have read everything in there.

Still; still. Can’t let it pass without a little ego-stroking. Hence the Clix graphic yonder: I’ve registered over there with diarist.net, and then went and registered with their utterly silly “top list” of escribitionists (and—I swear—that’s the last time I’ll ever type that particular neologism). Works thusly: you like; you click. You click; I go up in the rankings. I go up in the rankings; I’m obscurely happy for a moment or two, before I am once again reminded of the ephemeral nature of all beauty, and move on to something else.

See? So what are you waiting for? Click, already. Click, damn you! Click!

Also: I’ve mentioned her a number of times already, but Emily van Haankden was kind enough to write and say nice things and point out a broken link, and since she has a blog of her own, I feel compelled to mention her yet again. (You see? You see how that works? Simple, isn’t it?)

 

Book report.
Saturday, 10:12

The Silk Road is ultimately frustrating: good writing, a flawless sense of time and place, but the story gets forgotten somewhere along the way. Hints of it appear here and there—Fiona’s relationship with Greta, that house on the hill, its unseen parallels with Paige’s relationship with Fiona: all suggested, sketched out, filled in suddenly here at this point when it seems to occur to her and not—orchestrated, set firmly and well into the chords and harmonies hinted at, the possibilities unfulfilled. A first draft of a better book as yet unwritten.

Valencia isn’t orchestrated or harmonized and that’s the whole point. Gorgeous tumbling scattershot writing that went everywhere all at once, but slyly, with an impeccable eye for detail and anecdote. We like Michelle Tea, and shall doubtless steal from her, shamelessly, and with great gusto.

The Wives of Bath is better than the movie ostensibly based upon it (there are three characters in the movie named Mouse, Paulie and Torie, much as there are in the book; both are set in a Canadian girls’ boarding school; that’s about it, really); unfortunately, that’s not saying much. “Snarky” isn’t quite the right word, but certainly there is a distancing tone throughout the book that trivializes some very volcanic emotions (the movie, with all its bathetic excess, most emphatically does not commit this particular crime); plus, the author unfortunately makes much of the death of JFK, which I, at least, am officially tired of, and which the movie (wisely) decided to sidestep. It is of mild interest to note that the book is much more visually ambitious than the film: it’s easy, after all, to describe in prose some bizarre sight, such as the ghost of the former headmistress careening about on an old giant tricycle, and make it work; in film, you actually have to show it, which means either knowing exactly what you want to show, and how to go about showing it, or falling back on crappy CGI effects.

Having yet to finish Your Name Written On Water , I cannot speak with any authority as to its ultimate effect. Still, it’s already conjured up a number of terribly potent images, and it’s got that desperate, grief-tinged, consuming voice, that air of knowing, deep down, that the fight between life and death, affirmation and degradation, exaltation and consumption, is doomed, but fighting it anyway; the voice that I ultimately want most from this stuff, the voice that kicks something over inside and sets gongs to ringing, even when it’s a tad bit florid and overdone. (Perhaps especially; I have a weakness, at times, for the color purple.) I’m also amused by how Sofía’s circle of friends and interests overlaps, in my mind, with Corso’s circle of friends, or, rather, acquaintances, from The Club Dumas . Set in the same Madrid, perhaps; as slim little Valencia is rather uncomfortably just around a San Francisco corner from the enormous ragged ranting bulk of The Royal Family .

The “Pussy Play” letters in the Nov. 2001 Club Confidential are less inspiring than usual: there are only three, and though all describe actual encounters (none of the usual “I like looking at pictures of girls and your girls are so HOT” filler this month), they do so rather desultorily. “Lesbo Lickout,” for instance, begins with some small promise: nominally straight college slut propositioned by “super-cute Japanese girl in knee high boots and a minidress,” but all-too quickly cuts past the chase and right to the fucking. One wishes John Cleese were there to declaim stentoriously, “You don’t need to go stampeding straight for the clitoris!” Nor is it terribly believable that Jana had not previously attempted to play with her piercings in quite that way—nor is all that much done with it. And “Housesitting Hottie” is just inept. But: for those of a more visual bent, the “Kat and Nat” pictorial offers some compelling imagery: a variety of dildos employed in a variety of ways; an excellent job on both their parts of faking orgasmic ecstasy. One might well feel one’s money had not been wasted utterly. —For what it’s worth, Club continues to evince the funniest, snarkiest, and most self-aware copywriters outside the Hustler family of magazines.

“The Girl With Bangs” is perhaps the best thing in McSweeney’s no. 6 , aside from the soundtrack, and not merely because of its ostensible subject matter. Though “The Workshop” is sticking with me, and Breyten Breytenbach’s “(Notes from the Middle World)” is rendered relevent by how drastically irrelevant recent events seem to have made such a charming and humanistic essay on placelessness. —Though perhaps I’m just pessimistic; Lord knows, there’s reason enough.

And: midway through Perdido Street Station , I can’t help but feel that China Miéville is overrated.

 

Restless.
Wednesday, 22:56

Story of my life: work to be done, and I’m off noodling about somewhere else in my head. What? Sorry. Missed that. Put it over there.

Tristan’s talking about puppy play, which I do not find interesting. To each their own and I’m not denying the basic appeal could conceivably from certain perspectives have merit, but.

Headed to Jane’s to see if I could find something worth ranting about (and, yes, a link worth stealing) and didn’t, really (Bible-thumpers still hate fags in Broward County, Jerry Falwell’s still a dick (even Rush agrees), a pedophile burned his own house down hoping the perceived violence would get him a lesser sentence); got distracted and headed over to ERA to look up links to places to maybe sell a story since Clean Sheets turned me down (again), which I don’t think I ever got around to mentioning hereabouts; got vaguely annoyed once more that all the “literary” journals feel the need to be prissy and firm about no bestiality no incest no violence no underage no misogynistic themes no non-consensual sex no. Jerry Springer can deal with this stuff; soap operas can deal with this stuff; the evening news can deal with this stuff—but porn? —Excuse me, erotica...

(Yes. There’s very good reasons given the current political climate, to be nervous and keep everything “sex-positive,” but self-censorship is still censorship, and it’s damaging to what I at least see as the ultimate goal. Much as the current political climate causes many to insistently define one’s sexual preference as being entirely nature and not nurture at all—as something fixed, immutable, coded in a person’s essence and being, and thus not a choice at all, and thus something one cannot be condemned for—which is foolish on the face of it, since sexual preferences modulate and alter and can even—yes—change over time, much as one’s tastes in anything else [and with as little conscious control], and besides, as a tactic, it ain’t working. —But all that’s a kettle of fish of a different color entirely.)

Memo to self: never, ever move to Broward County.

 

Normalcy.
Tuesday, 07:46

Some like to sneer at the word, since it was invented by the famous mangler of diction and crappy American president, Warren G. Harding. But he didn’t invent it; in the speech he was giving when he supposedly did, he said something along the lines of “normaliticy.” Reporters decided to be kind and translate it as “normalcy,” a word that had first appeared in 1857, in Davies and Peck’s Mathematical Dictionary.

And it’s a much friendlier word than “normality.” Warmer, somehow. Rounder. Less technical. The two have distinctly different flavors; two distinctly different connotations.

ASSD is talking about sex stories again.

Emily’s sister Kate is describing a rather sordid encounter in a New York hotel.

Metafilter is obsessed with Noam Chomsky and Dave’s Finest Hour, but there’s still stuff appearing about computer security (snerk) and—um, well, that’s about it for normalcy there the past few days, but still. Nice to see.

We stopped listening to NPR at the day job yesterday and started playing music again. Talked about Björk and music boxes and the latest advances in publishing magazines.

Our neighbors are getting their house painted. Might borrow a ladder to deal with the Squirrels in the Ceiling.

Some friends are planning a game of Diplomacy.

Oh, and lusciouslola@yahoo.com wants everyone to know she LIKES IT FROM BEHIND.

—Of course, “normalcy” is also more illusory than “normality.” More self-conscious. More obviously a construct, a coping mechanism. More artificial.

But no less comforting. Moreso, in fact.

 

 

Housekeeping (written under the pernicious influence of McSweeney’s; I do apologize; while I cannot guarantee it will never happen again, Measures Will Be Taken).
Sunday, 14:11

Noting the number of anonymous form mails arriving with no content whatsoever, and becoming concerned at the dearth of anonymous form mails arriving with any content at all, I performed some minor experiments. It would seem that the valiant if over-worked servers of the alt.sex.stories Text Repository (which, as you know, hosts this site, and many others) are, perhaps, not up to simultaneously delivering the latest in free smut to horndog readers from Duluth to Dubai and processing its simple and elegant form-mail script in a manner that is both a) timely and b) guaranteed to deliver the contents carefully typed into the box provided.

Or maybe it was something I did. At any rate:

Be it hereby resolved: that all links which formerly transferred the browser to the “contact” page, which offered the anonymous form mail as an option, would henceforth be converted to simple mailto links which would allow the reader (if he or she so desired) to send email directly to my Yahoo account, nickurfe@yahoo.com. It is also resolved that I feel rather badly about the dark thoughts entertained regarding browsers who (it was assumed) had sent me dozens of empty email messages because they thought it might be funny. It is further resolved that I should publicly note that if you, Dear Reader, had, at some point, attempted to send me words (kind or otherwise), carefully typed into the box provided, and had wondered at my lack of response within these screens or otherwise, and had entertained dark thoughts regarding what you saw as my callous and generally churlish nature, it is not because I am callous and a churl, but rather because I never saw what you had typed. —So noted.

Also: the visual design of the contact page was poorly conceived and badly executed.

As well: a new story has been added to the site: a short piece, originally written as a “flasher” for the Erotica Readers’ Association mailing list. “Flashers” are supposed to be quick and short, not exceeding 100 words; they are quite firm in this. What was—amusing (to me, at any rate)—was the reaction to this piece: although many kind words were said, and a number of people generously recommended dropping the “but” from the penultimate clause of the second sentence (I have not, but I trust I have made it clearer through judicious application of my favorite punctuation mark: the em-dash)—but what sticks in my mind is the rather tense and, yes, hectoring posts from a number of participants lecturing all and sundry on the fact that, if it hurts, then it is not being performed properly. So: if I must: yes. Pain, in general, is to be avoided; “ripping sensations” are a sign that something is wrong. You should probably stop under those circumstances. But stretching a muscle which is not quite ready to, well, stretch in quite that (or any other) way, even with lubricant and a certain eagerness, will tend to result in sensations that are not entirely unlike pain—without, however, being dangerous, harmful in any lasting way, or “ripping,” and I have a right if not a duty to express what happened and what I felt without worrying overmuch that my words might be misconstrued by someone with, shall we say, a certain naïveté, as a statement of the necessarily painful nature of the activity so described, thus resulting in their ill-advised and foolish experimentation with same, leading to physical damage, embarrassment, hospitalization, ostracization, shame, shyness and reticence, a tendency to, in the future, sneer (secretly) at those who claim to enjoy it, and mutter (under the breath) imprecations such as “pillow-biter” and “freak,” and any other consequences too terrible to imagine.

Okay?

And: I had no idea so many people were looking for nude photos of Dare Wright, or links to Photoshop Tennis.

 

Swag.
Sunday, 12:12

Items received (thus far) on the occasion of my natal anniversary:

One (1) congratulatory email.
One (1) copy, Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys.
Various personal greetings (not itemized).
One (1) copy, Verspertine, Björk.
One (1) copy, The Black Rider, Tom Waits et. al.
One (1) copy, Mink Car, They Might Be Giants.
One (1) copy, McSweeney’s no. 6, consisting as stated of Timothy McSweeney’s very intense heated passionate battle/embrace with They Might Be Giants, by divers hands—printed, it should be noted, in Iceland.
Two (2) tickets to a performance by (it is presumed) Johns Linnell & Flansburgh, the band of Dans, and a special musical guest. —Which has, I have just discovered, been understandably postponed, due to the Unpleasantness.
One (1) excellent brunch.

Profound thanks to all and sundry.