I just ran across what I find to be a stunning collection of artistic erotic images (pretty porn), on a Tumblr blog called "Le Chagrin".

This site is decidedly NSFW, so don't click if your boss is standing behind you - http://chagrin.tumblr.com/

What I like about this site - aside from just pure hotness - is that it's a completely non-themed collection defined by one thing; beauty. Every single picture I've seen is artistically gorgeous. But it doesn't suffer from the tendency some 'artistic' erotica sites have, of mistaking demure and soft-core for artistic; many of these pictures are profoundly hard-core (there's plenty of fucking, plenty of pegging, plenty of cock-sucking and come). But there's also a lot of romantic imagery; that's one of the things I love. There are photos of couples kissing, embracing, and even sleeping.

There are images where the erotic content is implied, and many where it's front and center. The selections below are chosen because they're all work safe, but trust me, the first page you hit from the link above is a profoundly hot pegging image, so don't be fooled by these.

(Thanks to the beautiful and talented Monica for sending me a link to this site)

This is what happens when you drink with videographers. You get your beach house weekend turned into a music video.

This was a long weekend in Dillion Beach, CA; four couples, three children, seven cameras, 20 bottles of wine, fifty oysters, many cases of beer, and no internet connection of cell phones.

It was over too soon, but now thanks to film maker Dave Manzo, we won't be able to forget it.

That last entry was kind of grim, huh? I know I've written something grim when no one comments, but but I get email from loved ones saying "are you ok" or "I'm worried about you".

The downside of tranks (which I just adore), is that there's a bit of a crash on the tail end. I wish I had a cut-and-pastable version of Art Pepper's autobiography, straight life (which is fucking brilliant), because it captures the extremes of this like nothing else]. People with psychosis disorders or extremes of depression sometimes find it leaves them with, in effect, all the misery and black depression that it's held off for ten to twelve hours, collected and concentrated and experienced all at once. I'm lucky. all I get, the rare times I take it to help me sleep, is an hour or two of grumpiness on the tail end, before my psyche self-corrects.

That's not to say any of what I wrote yesterday was inaccurate; but the tone wound up more intensely bleak than is my usual style due to lingering effects, and oncoming trank hangover. I consider that actually a good thing, because it helped me actually get over a verbal drought and say something.

The problem I'm having, lately, is a combination of a huge hit to my productivity, and a vastly increased workload (trying to build a side business of my own, as well as my team at work having to support many, many projects at the same time).

It sounds like I'm whining when I say this. But it's really causing me a problem. Being productive isn't really my most consistent skill at the best of times.

Going from having an office to living it cube-land has been disastrous for me. Sure, I was a cube-dweller for the better part of two decades before I started my current job, so it's not like I've never been there. But I have a huge problem with distraction. In the past, I managed that by staying incredibly busy doing fairly linear work, and by working at home when I could (in my previous job, that was almost half my time). This job's different. Partly because my team are less staffed, partly because we're more specialized, partly because the schedule we're on is vastly more accelerated. And also because my current employer still functions like a pre-internet company and does things face to face, in meetings and hallway conversations. So crucial support people need to be physically in the office, and physically near the key users.

For me, this is the very worst environment for productivity. I don't sound-screen well; I hear everyone around me having a dozen different conversations. I don't visually screen; my peripheral vision is acute, and I track movement and changes in light constantly. In my old bldg, I had control over light (I left it off all the time, with only natural window light). I could screen sound by closing my door or playing music. I could even drop my blinds and lock my door for when distraction was at it's worse (or, you know, so I could catch up with my favorite web cam girls).

For me, that was as ideal a situation as I could have, working in an office bldg. I was close to my user community, but I had methods to manage my environment, and my distraction level.

The bldg I'm in now is, frankly, about as badly designed as is possible for a modern office bldg. What I suspect is that it was designed by architecture students who'd never actually worked in an office, because the wrongness is so fundamentally obvious. Hard walls everywhere; offices and conference rooms walled in glass. Cube walls are half glass (thus blowing both reasons for cubes; sound screen and privacy). Celings are high, and the lighting has two options (off and as brightly glaring as a stage). Most of the flooring is hard surface, with the little carpeted area hard at leather, and black, a color that shows every bit of dust and spilled food. Instead of conference rooms, we have un-walled "soft seating" areas.

In all this noise-and-light-fest, I wound up in the worst corner in the bldg; a corner that sticks out into a major walkway, at the junction of stairs, and coffee/break area. My corner is bombarded with constant slamming doors, loud chatter, roaring coffee machines (they're as loud as espresso machines), and traffic moving past my glass-walled cube in a never-ending stream. And of course, with no sound buffering, every person in the area is party to every phone conversation anyone has.

Use Headphones, people say. But unfortunately, my inherent jumpiness and resistance to vulnerability makes me loath headphones. I've never been able to work in them, and don't even like them when I'm alone in my house. As much as I loved a doobie and dark side of the moon back in the day, I still always preferred to have the lights off and the speakers screaming than a pair of headphones.

So the last few months have been a constant struggle for me at work. And it cascades; I can't make personal calls at work the way I used to, so I'm no longer able to use my breaks to manage personal business. I used to do my banking, make appointments, all manner of things that needed both the phone and business hours, from my desk in between tasks (because let's face it, there are always moments of the day when we're goofing off, and it was better than playing solitaire, checking facebook, or visiting 'guess her muff'). Now, I can't make my goof-off time personally productive; I'm not making appointments I need to make (dentist, chiropractor, tax guy, etc).

The sum of it all is that I feel harried all the time; I feel like I'm incredibly busy. But I'm not getting enough done. I can feel my time getting wasted. I'm not even enjoying it when I fuck off, because I know when I'm done it'll be even worse.

I don't have a solution for this right now. My company is in a space crunch (which is good, ultimately; we're growing, hiring in a down economy, but it has a short term cost in terms of comfort). My building, built to house two organizations with growth room, was full before we'd even moved in. And being a key support person, no one wants me off site, not even one bldg over, because they feel my attention on them means they get better support (they're profoundly wrong, I respond best to email, not to being accosted in the hall).

Sure, it's easy to say i'm lucky to have a job, that if I worked in a filthy place for a shitty wage doing dangerous work, I'd dream about a job like I have now. And I know that's true, I've had jobs like that. My problem is,I'm better than this. I'm capable of being not good, not competent, but truly great at my job. And right now, I'm not there. I'm struggling to maintain mediocrity, and that isn't enough for me. I could be mediocre for a lot less stress than this.

I guess the answer is I need to make some fundamental change. I know that; two weeks ago on a whim I sent a resume to facebook (they had a job listed that was a perfect fit for me, though they were too stupid to realize that and send me a polite form blow-off letter.) I don't think I actually wanted to work for facebook; I think something in me just knew I needed to start thinking about what I'm doing, what I want to be doing, and what the delta between these is. I don't have an answer yet, But I guess I know that's the question.

I think one of the reasons I haven't be blogging lately is that I feel like a broken record.

No time, fatigue, stress, burnout, beat until frothy and place in 350 degree oven.

I get tired of saying it. There are few thing in the world a hate like I hate self-pity. Those who put themselves in a situation and then bitch; those who won't take action to solve a problem.

But when I try to write, what comes to mind first is, how completely fucked up I feel right now. To the point that in blots out all other thought.

I look back at my last year's blogging and in between tattoo posting and links to porn, humor, music and art, I find the interconnections all have the same theme. Burnout.

So I'm trying to figure out why it is I feel that way. It's not that I'm working that hard right now - in fact, I'm not really getting much done at all. But I feel, for the first time since I joined apple nine years ago (almost to the day), like my job is dragging me down into quicksand.

My life is organized around my greatest strengths. What I do is solve problems. I didn't have any grand plan for a career, so I derive what my career has been only by looking back at it. And to a one, the jobs I seek, or create, or thrust into, all have that thread. I'm not a projects guy, I don't do organization and follow-through well. What I do, though, is look at systems and see the flaws, the missing pieces, the inefficiencies. My life also seems to follow that pattern. The people to whom I've been most drawn are broken in some fundamental way. Not that they need help, per se, but that they have some vast physical, mental or character deficiency

The cost of all that, of course, is that I put myself into broken systems, and being that I can't stand things that are broken, I strive fix them, often via sheer brute force. I become the link that holds the chain together, and I'm the strongest link, because I tolerate no less of myself. But to steal a line from genesis and a hundred others, we’re only as strong, As the weakest link in the chain. So no matter how strong I make my one link, the chain will always fail elsewhere.

Chaos is the default state of the universe. We impose order for a while; but only will and energy can maintain it. Living things are a system slightly more organized than the baseline chaos of an ecosystem; an ecosystem is a system slightly more organized than the universe. Only man's mind can create and maintain a system more tightly and carefully organized than biological organisms, and only constant thought can produce the ongoing effort that maintains such systems.

Thing want to fall apart; buildings want to fall down. Computers want to fail.

Due to inherent aptitude, genetic inheritance, and the way I was raised, I feel a great compulsion to hold that line against chaos. When I think if it, it turns into an almost cartoonish vision of some Moorcockian champion of order (where's my black fucking sword? Where's my companion and his winged cat?). But the reality of it isn't as much fun; I won't have another incarnation to continue the fight; I can't call another version of myself for help through some portal in the multiverse.

I do this alone. Not because there's no help, but because I can't stand help that isn't absolutely under my control and on my terms. Help, when I ask for it, has to be exactly the help I need and no more.

The cost of this is that I put myself in situations where I'm absolutely vital, and absolutely irreplaceable. Not only at work, but everywhere in my life, I have vast lists of things that need to be done, and in ways that no one else I see around me can handle. Because solutions have to do more than solve a problem; they have to strike blow against encroaching chaos.

That battle seems to get harder each year. I don't know if it's simply the natural progression of the world, the inherent growth of a system over time. I don't know if it's that life, inevitably, grows more complex as one acquires more things, builds investments, raises children. Or if it's the inevitable fact of age. To steal another line,as soon as we're born we start dying. But it isn't linear; it accelerates with time, picking up speed with each round of auld lang syne.

Whatever it is, more and more of late my mind is full of the maddening minutiae of life, the crushing weight of task lists that grow only longer. And I find, at the end of days which flash by ever faster, that I have nothing in that part of my mind that yearns to put words together in creative ways. It's easier to reach for a beer and the remote control. Because when I reach for my computer, nothing comes out but the same worn and blacked refrain about time and burnout.

The eagle, as they say, has landed.

Fifth session: I was a little hung over today (man, what a party that was last night), so we made this a short session. Just the shading on the eagle. The only thing left to shade is the ship, and then we're ready to start coloring. That should happen at my next appointment in June.

I absolutely love this blog: "guess her muff".

I love it because it's a game, AND becauseit's (good quality) porn (pictures of lovely real naked girls, not posed pros).

I also love it because it's exactly the sort of game I play. I look at women in various circumstances (at work, at school-related parent meetings, at various social gatherings) and wonder, what's she look like naked. I wonder, does she shave? If so, how? Does she wax? Does she use a razor in the shower? Does she leave a landing strip, or is she sweetly, wetly bare (which is not just a preference of mine, but in truth a fetish; it's been so since long before porn adopted it as a standard).

This site has kept me entertained, and distracted, for two days now. Were I keeping score, my score would be lousy, almost always guessing wrong.

The site itself is work-safe, but beware the 'See the Answer' links. They're not just naked, some of them are profoundly pornographic (buttsechs!). So open with care. And prepare to be distracted.

Wow, i've completely lost any drive to write. To the point where it surprised me to actually get any comments the last week. I kind of forgot my blog existed.

Sigh.

Quick update - after a really long several weeks of work chaos, this are looking settled down. This means I don't have to keep waking up at 4am, but I now have to catch up on all the crap I put off the last month while I was waking up at 4 am. I'm still completely swamped, in other words, but it's looking like a controlled sort of swamped for the short term.

Otherwise - i have no life. I don't get tattooed again til june, I have no travel plans to speak of until august (and then, just a weekend for a family re-union in the san juans). The project with getting mom's house in order for a rental has been a typical money pit scenario, though I think it's almost done. I'm not making any money on it this year, but it's sure as hell gonna help my taxes next year. Meanwhile, planning frivolities is a no-op.

I'm glad I bought my motorcycle before I figured out I can't afford it. Cause gas is cheap affordable when you only need to fill a three gallon tank, and the now that the weather is nice, riding is all I wanna do.

I keep promising myself more actual writing; micro-blog and status updates doesn't count. Soon. Really.

Holy shit it's been a week.

This is almost entirely work stuff, so of course I can't talk about details; you know how my employer is about details.

But it's been the kind of week that phrase like 'for fuck's sake' were invented for. I've reached the point where I'm jumpy and flinching every time I open my email or check my phone for messages, wondering what's broken now.

Here's how things have been this week, in the insult-to-injury department: we actually had a server farm taken down this week due to a lightening strike yesterday, and then early this morning, my key software vendor who's doing support lost his home phone, internet, and cell, all due to intentionally cut fiber optic cables.

Because we needed more goddamn chaos.

I don't even have time this week to get my taxes finished, so I'm in danger of having to take an extension; I don't have time to go to the doctor even though I'm pretty damn sure I've got a sinus infection going (wow, the allergies have sucked this season). I don't even have time to take a goddamn shower.

Anyone want my job for a day so I can go sleep? No? I didn't think so.

On the other hand, I had the most wonderful dream last night, about a stunning, exotic brunette, though I woke before we could get past the 'looking at each other like something good to eat' phase. But still, it was enough that I woke up vaguely in love/ Maybe I'll actually have time to write the rest that down sometime next goddamn year.

I think I'm in love with Justine Lai.

This is a bit of her 'Join or Die' series. In her words:

"In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. "

(you can read the whole statement here)