June 2007 Archives

You think the 911/pot brownies thing was all about *bad drugs?

Think again.

This fuckin' thing is about bad drugs.

*when I say bad drugs, i of course mean good drugs. You know what i'm sayin.

Ok. It's time. Go get your iPhone.

I don't get mine 'til late july (we get ours after you get yours - hell, I have the same philosophy in bed, so I can't argue). And no, I can't get you one, I can't get me one, apart from the one-per-employee apple's handing out as a thanks for the incredible amount of work we've all been doing on this project.

If you manage to score one, let me know what you think. I still ain't actually seen one in person, for all the hours I've put into getting the chips and boards out.

One can add only three words to this.

"What The Fuck"

(I had to move this after the cut because for some reason it totally fucks my formatting in safari)

Ok, i got tagged on this one (lifts shirt to show indecipherable spray-paint marking).

I don't usually respond to the tag kinda meme (nor dares neither), but a meme that came from susie bright, in which she tagged two of my very favorite girl-sex-bloggers (bitchy and chelsea) is simply hard to say no to.

Or maybe it's just that BJ and CG are both impossible to say no to.

In any case, here are the rules:

1. Post these rules before you present the facts.
2. Start with eight random facts/habits about yourself.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

But the game seems to have taken on '6. ...and then change the rules'.

So I'm gonna flip CG's meme and give you seven true, and one not. See if you can pick the one.

1) My feet are different sizes; really different sizes. I care just barely wear a pair of shoes, and one's always too big or two small.

2) I once got a blowjob from one of the bridemaids at a wedding, while her husband was inside drinking shots with my friends.

3) I have a half sister I didn't know about until I was in my 20s. I kind of wish I'd met her without knowing who she was so - well, you can finish that story for yourself.

4) Despite the fact that I don't smoke pot, I still own a bong that is made up of roughly eight feet of plexiglass tubing and five feet of rubber hose.

5) I've bought drinks for Todd Rundgren, talked about tropical fish with Tom Waits, and almost saw Heather Locklear get pantsed by her daughter.

6) I once fucked a teenage girl in a catholic church.

7) The first time I got high it was weed I'd stolen from my parents.

8) I have a hunk of cat claw embedded in my left cheek.

Have fun. I won't tag anyone else but if you steal, steal well.

I just, finally got around to watching the second season of Rome (at least the first episode of it).

I'd forgotten how brilliant this show is. Five, maybe ten minutes in, I was right back there, and by the end, I was Titus fuckin' Pullo, savage, bloody, unbeaten, enemies at my feet.

This show makes me want to snarl and roar and swing a sword.

God dammit, where's my slave girl, my wine skin, my blood-spattered tunic. I'm ready. Get me a goddamned time machine. This man isn't just a character like I want to write; in my head, he's the character I am. To steal a quote from an entirely different place, I had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century.

I should have been a roman. I should have lived in a time when you were invited to an orgy, not a cocktail party. Where you wake up and send for a slave girl ("Go get that German slut from the kitchens, will you?", as Atia says), where you can solve a problem by spilling blood. Fuck therapy, let's try killing.

That world makes sense to me. Far, far more than does this one.

I can't wait to delve further into this season; though as with Sopranos and Deadwood, I think I've resisted the watching because I don't want it to end. Such things need, emotionally if not dramatically, to run off into the horizon. I do not want them finite, even if they're better for ending before we're ready.

Pullo can't die. Ever. The curtain may fall on him, but he must remain, bloodied, but unbroken. Rome may fall, emperors may die by the knife or the sword, but Pullo needs to stand at the end. He's just that kind of character.

Because when you're at the end of your rope you should always play Spiritualized at maximum volume:

I'm not kidding now, maximum volume, until your brain bleeds.

The odd thing about this video is that J spaceman is standing up and facing the audience. Normally he's nowhere near this interactive.

I'm havin' a shitload a problems with persistent, cached routes, PLUS I accidently published one of my other blogs over this site (pilot error - bad cut-n-paste (which I just typo'd cunt-n-paste as usual).

If yer havin' a less than stellar experience here, well, I guess it's that. Or just the usual less-than-stellar experience, but for that I can't blame the stupid internet.

Its one of those funny things when you get a new one and it's just like the old one. Like those weird people who get a new car and get the exact same car they had before (yeah I'm talking to you, Lisa).

If you're readin' this it means you're now on a shiny, fast and new server. Basically, if you see a difference, it means I broke something.

Due to an unexpected schedule change, The Moronosphere and all it's related blogs and domains will be moving to a new physical server this week. Not the best timing for me, personally but I live here by the good grace and generosity of my friend Brandon, and so I am grateful even if a bit frazzled.

What all this means is that this site may unexpectedly vanish for a day or so while we change ip addresses; comments may cease to work while databases are moved.

If that happens, don't worry; being a fly-by-night sort of operation, we're flying-by-night (oh god stop me from quoting a rush song). Things should stabilize by next week, on bigger, better, faster hardware.

I just finished reaidng Stephen King's On Writing.

It's one of those books several people have told me I should read; so may I can't even remember them all. Doxy, I think, and maybe miss syl, and others (circe?); the latest was elizabeth spankington.

I tend to be highly resistant with things like that. If you want me to do something, i likely won't do it. The more you want it, the less likely you'll get it (no, i'm not at all contrary, why do you ask?) So even when it's something I in fact am interested in, often I either will put it off, or get it and then put it away and not listen or read.

For some reason though when E asked me the other day if I'd read it I clicked 'purchase' on amazon before I even thought about it.

It's an interesting book; fascinating, frustrating, uneven, brilliant in some ways, irritating in others, not unlike the rest of King's body of work.

For those who don't know it, On Writing is a combination Memoir and writing manual.

For some reason this video is oddly hot. I can't quite identify why.

(courtesy of Bikinirama)

(Click the pic - I'm sorry i can't embed that. I've yet to figure out a workable way to embed quicktime in MT posts. I've tried all sorts of voodooo and it never embeds correctly.

EDIT: The error below was my fault, i fucked up the install. On a second try I got it right.

They've fixed quite a few bugs, which is good, though the interface problem remains un-addressed. So it is progress, if not in the interface.

Six-Apart have released a new beta (beta 2) - which doesn't work at all, won't even load (click the image below to see a beautiful error message):

They did admit there are some issues with the completely bolloxed up interface; they 'solved' this by combing two obscure pulldowns into one obscure pulldown, while not seeming to see the core problem of hiding all the frequent tasks behind pulldowns and page loads.

[sarcasm] and there was much rejoicing[/sarcasm]

They really don't get it; but at least i finally got noticed and responded to by the people at Six Apart. They're not stupid, so the question is only, will they get what they did wrong or will they keep trying to band-aid a death-wound. It's about a coin-flip on that one right now.

I decided, last weekend, to put bigger-guage rings in my nipples. The gauge I had (12) has a slight tendency to pinch, and the general rule is, the thicker, the more comfortable. Plus, thicker rings just plain look cooler.

Now, I've had a lot of piercings over the years. I've still got six in my ears; in the past I had more, in nose, ears, nipples (a first try that didn't take, but left scar tissue behind), and others south of the belt. So I'm no stranger to either needles, or to stretching piercings.

Saturday morning, I woke slowly, and, still in that almost-sleeping state where I've mentally written some of my best work, and where I've also had some of my most vivid fantasies, I started playing with my nipple rings in a sort of absent way.

It occurred to me that the right nipple - the one with no scar tissue - was finally sitting free enough in the piercing that I might be able to get in a larger gauge ring.

I carefully removed the 12ga from my right nipple (a very odd feeling, removing body piercing jewelry), and then pulled the 10ga ring from my left ear lobe. I didn't really expect the ring to fit, but was just sleepy enough to want to try, and just awake enough to manage it without dropping the steel balls that hold the rings closed.

The ring slipped neatly through my nipple; just tight enough that there was a slight tingle as it went through, and a pleasing sensation of tightness in the nipple afterwards. I popped the steel bead in place and got up.

I made coffee; highly, erotically aware of my right nipple, as I had been when I first got them pierced (though with no pain, just the lingering sensation that came a week or more after the piercing).

I went digging through the collection of random jewelry I own; various rings and barbells from various piercings over the years, some not mine (trophies from long-ago meetings, I'd like to claim, though in fact more likely just borrowed when I was in my stretching phase and needed a 6ga, or a 4, or something.)

I came up empty, for some reason owning no 10ga rings of the appropriate diameter; though it's not like I mind visiting my local piercing shop.

I would really have liked to put in gold rings in my nipples. I think gold looks great in piercings; I used to be all about silver/stainless, but ever since getting a gold tooth a few years ago (my dentist thought I was daft for choosing gold rather than a standard sort of ceramic that looks like a real tooth, though I bet they get more requests since Pirates than in those days), I've become quite the fan of gold for piercings and things. Alas, the rings I wanted would have gone for $250 each (ouch - gold's gone up).

I bought two rings - one to replace the ear, and one for the other nipple. My piercer, Sharrin, offered to put them in for me, and given that I'll almost never pass up a change to have my nipples played with, I happily took her up on the offer. As it turned out, it was a good choice.

My left nipple - for those of you who've never had the chance to get in your mouths, which I must say, is far too many of you - is about twice the size of my right. I tried, many years ago, to pierce it, and the piercing, for some reason, never took. My body just didn't like it, and tried very very hard to reject the intruder. I fought hard to keep it, trying everything i could think of (and given that I was the guy who founded rec.arts.bodyart and its parent, the Modern Primitives mailing list, I knew quite literally as much about piercing as anyone around in those days, including most pro piercers.)

In the end, i gave up. I took the barbell out of my nipple and figured the scarring would go away. It never did. Though that didn't matter to me; I love scarring (I've fallen in love with girls in the past just because of a particularly interesting scar or two), and don't mind being asymmetrical.

When I got my nipples pierced again, Halloween '05, I didn't really expect it to take, particularly on the left. But I'd wanted them pierced since I was a teenage and saw a character in an old Harold Hedd comic with his nipples pierced. So I was willing to try again.

The right one wasn't bad. It's difficult to describe the feeling of having a large (12ga) needle pushed slowly through any part of your body. It hurts, but as pains go, it's a particularly firey one. Short in duration, but in a place that has more pleasure/pain nerves then almost anywhere else on the body. The entire universe, for a few seconds, focuses down to a single point, like the mild light of the sun focused by a magnifying glass, to a pin-point of searing heat. Everything else goes away.

The left one, of corse, was different. Scar tissue is very much tougher than skin. Sharrin dug in behind it, because piercing through it would have been nearly impossible, incredibly uncomfortable, and likely would not have healed. This means that there was both more, and tougher, skin to go through.

The piercing took easily twice as long; the only description I've come up with that does it justice is to say it felt like having a doorknob driven through my nipple. And not in a good way; I may be a sadist, and I may be quite able to enjoy pain in a sexual context (bite harder, bitch, bite harder). But I'm no pain slut.

On the other hand, the feeling when it was over was quite indescribable. Like my nipples were suddenly as big as walnuts. I felt like they should be glowing. They hurt - a weird burning pressure - but it was a weirdly thrilling sensation.

For the next few weeks as they healed - the period where they're most likely to fail, from infections or whatever - it was incredibly difficult to leave them alone. It was like a constant state of foreplay; just putting on my shirt felt erotic. I wanted people to touch them, play with them, suck on them, and of course that's exactly what you can't do with new piercings.

That feeling slowly faded, for good or ill. Now I'm barely aware of them, unless I hook one on a shirt button or something, or get smacked in the chest.

What I hadn't realized, though, was that the scarred left nipple was not quite as ready to be up-sized as the right. The right went though with no resistance, only a pleasing residual tightness. What I found was that there was no way I could have gotten the 10 into the left by myself.

There's a device called an insertion taper; basically a blunt needle that starts one gauge and ends a larger gauge. The intent is obvious, to help thread a larger ring though a reasonably healed piercing, stretching as it goes. Usually this is nearly painless, if the piercing is ready.

Now, when I get pierced, I know what's coming. I know it will hurt. I have time to breath, and relax. This time, I didn't expect it.

When Sharrin pushed the taper through my nipple, it was a searing reminder of the original piercing. I wasn't any more mentally ready for the experience than the piercing was ready for the larger ring. It was shocking. I rarely make noises when something hurts; I can rightly be described as stoic (though I will sometimes respond to pain with violent anger and swearing). This time, I moaned faintly, the sound escaping my lips unexpectedly.

It was over quickly; but I was left with the tingling reminder of the original piercing. Now, a week later, my nipples are tender, pleasantly sensitive, but with no trace of pain.

It's not a feeling like anything else in the world, having a piece of metal through a sensitive, erogenous part of the body. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I found a blurb about this on BoingBoing, but it's one of those things that just seems to be worth passing on.

David Pescovitz (of BoingBoing) writes:
"During the recent republican presidential debate, the moderator asked nine candidates to raise their hands if they "didn't believe in evolution." Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo raised their hands. Last week, Brownback wrote a New York Times op-ed attempting to explain his reasoning."

The interesting part, though, and what I want to feature, is Jerry Coyne's very well written reply to Brownback's piece.

Coyne writes: "Whether he knows it or not, Brownback's forthright declarations, denying any possibility that empirical matters of fact might differ from those assumed by his creed, amount to nothing less than a rejection of the whole institution of science. Who is "we", and where did "our" conviction and certainty come from? Would Brownback believe these "spiritual truths" if he hadn't been taught them as a child, or brought up in the United States instead of China?

According to Brownback, we should reject scientific findings if they conflict with our faith, but accept them if they're compatible. But the scientific evidence says that humans are big-brained, highly conscious apes that began evolving on the African savannah four million years ago. Are we supposed to reject this as "atheistic theology" (an oxymoron if there ever was one)?"

Coyne's piece perfectly captures the errors in faith-based thinking, and neatly distills what's what's inherently wrong the popular mis-understanding of the nature of evolutionary biology. The description I've long used is that creationism's rhetoric is entirely based on a failure to understand the meaning of the word 'theory' in 'theory of evolution'. Coyne does a better job laying it out, in a well written (and vaguely frightening) article. I highly recommend that you go read it.

And now, a geek interlude.

(mmm. 'ludes.)

I run this blog (and those I support) on Movable Type. I know there's a vast, imaginary religious war between WordPress users and Movable Type users, though in fact my loyalty to Movable Type has more to do with my expertise in the tool (I can put together an MT blog from scratch, including a download and most major plugins in about five minutes).

In any case, being a major geek, i always get excited when there's a major new version of a tool I use. I check every damned day for updates on when ecto3 is coming out, for example.

Yesterday, Brandon told me that MT4 had just entered Beta. And even though I'm way too busy to work on something like this, I still had to go download and install it.

There are a billion new features. It really looks, in a lot of ways, like they've merged the best of vox and typepad with MT. Reading about all they've added and fixed, i'm loving the product.

But then I actually used it.

I'm a sucker for women's voices.

This happens to me all the time. I spend a lot of time on the phone as part of my job, dealing with software vendors, support people, sales. Sometimes I think, particularly in sales, they hire based on voices.

So sometimes, while I'm on a business call, I'll get distracted by a woman's voice. Some accents do it to me - girlish southern charm or british elegance, or, god help me, scottish or irish (grrrrowl). But it's the voice itself, and I can't even begin to define what makes one voice sexier than another. It's not just deep, or breathy, or whiskey-and-cigarettes. It's not low, or high. It's not any one of those things. Like what is and is not art, I can't tell you what makes a voice sexy, but damn, i know it when I hear it.

But when it happens on a business call, I have a great deal of trouble maintaining composure.

It happened to me just now. I was talking to a sales rep for one of my software vendors about a licensing problem, and the woman (whose name was 'Devina') said my name, and I just lost my train of thought completely. She was talking about license versions and support tickets, and asking me questions about how we do things. I was trying to concentrate and answer, but I could feel my balls starting to tingle. I wanted to whisper call me daddy, and tell me what you're wearing into my head-set. I wanted to start telling her to un-do a button on her blouse. or at least, I wanted to say you have a really, really sexy voice.

I behaved. I'm at work. I like my job and would just as soon not get fired. But I know there's the one out there, now and then, who'd get it. The one who'd gasp, and respond to my lowered, growling tone the way I'm responding to her. I've talked to her, certainly, without even knowing it. The one who'd do what I told her, there at her desk. The one who's panties I could dampen with a few words.

So after I hung up the phone, I wondered what Devina would sound like having an orgasm, I growled softly at the phone.

Women's voices - they just drive me fucking wild.

A dream I had last night - fading already, because I dreamed it early in a night filled with other dreams. I should have gotten up and written this at two am, when I woke, for it was brilliantly vivid at the time, that kind of taste-smell-touch memory of intense dreams.

I'd been in a class - some sort of technical scuba seminar, the kind where you study decompression and theory, but not the kind where you get in the water. This is the sort of classes i love in real life - no nonsense, no wasted time practicing skills I already have; just hard-core tech.

There were only a few of us in the class; a guy I remember (dark hair, little goatee, with a self-conscious hipster look about him) and several generic people I have no memory of. The class itself seemed to have happened just before the dream began, because the details of it are nowhere in my memory, only the sense of what it was and how I felt about it. The dream fades in as the class is ending. We're picking up our things, filling out some sort of papers, writing checks to pay for the class.

The female instructor was the focus of the dream. She was tall, maybe an inch taller than me. Her hair a sort of sandy red. She was slender, but with the right sort of curves in the right places. She looked tan and athletic. Pretty, just short of the kind pretty that makes you stop and stare, the kind of breathtaking pretty that leaves me tongue-tied in real life.

She had that sort of smile, though; you know the kind, the sort of smile that makes you feel like you're the only one in the room when it's turned in your direction. She looked ten years my junior or more, thirty-three, maybe thirty-five.

As we gathered our things to leave the small classroom, two things were known to me, in that 'previously, on' way things are assumed to have already happened in a dream joined mid-story. First, that I had developed a considerable crush on the instructor, and second, that the other man in the class seemed to have a similar interest. We were both dawdling as the class ended, letting the other students leave, waiting for our instructor to walk out. A sense of un-spoken rivalry hung in the room between us.

The instructor - nameless in my dream - stepped out of the room, and I timed my exit carefully to step out behind her while 'accidently' bumping my erstwhile rival just enough that he dropped his papers. Then I was past him and kicked the doorstop out, letting the door close behind me.

It was just enough - I somehow then had her to myself, in dream-time the minor delay I'd given him stretched out as long as I needed.

"Hey, I got a minute?" I asked her as she walked away. She stopped, looked back over her shoulder, and then smiled me and turned. She seemed glad to see I'd followed her.

I could feel the attraction, an electric spark between us.

"First, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your class."

I went on a bit, though I've no idea the details; both the topic of the class, and the conversation about it, are gone now, in the light of day. What remains though is her face, blue eyes, a spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks, like Evangeline Lilly, and her look of warm attention.

"The other thing I wanted to say..."

I stumbled here, awkward, wanting to tell her I liked her. I stammered a little, then managed to get it out.

"...I find you really, really attractive, and I just can't stop thinking, you know..."

She blushed faintly, and looked away, and bit her lip. And then stepped closer to me, across that invisible 'personal space' line.

"Oh my god," she said, half a whisper, her voice gone breathy; "We're both on exactly the same wavelength here."

You know the feeling; that spark when someone you're interested in, someone you're attracted to, admits or demonstrates returning the feeling. A spark, a thrill.

I put a hand on her arm, and then she was touching me; and right there in the middle of the store or school or whatever public place, we were embracing, and kissing. It had an almost cinematic quality, like I was feeling our kiss, and seeing it. Her hard nipples against my chest, the skin of her waist under my fingers as they slid up under her shirt; the taste of her mouth, the smell of her, the musk of arousal and a faint floral scent in her hair.

At the same time, i could see us; her strawberry-blond hair, her white blouse, now half-un-tucked. Her jeans-clad leg half wrapped around mine and she leaned into me. My tattooed arms, one around her waist, one around her shoulders, pulling her to me.

And behind us, my frustrated rival, knowing he'd lost; raging at his timing, though in truth he'd lost long before I cut him off.

Things blur after this - at some point we are in her car, a frustratingly small honda. She's half on top of me as we kiss. Her shirt's half-off, bra unhooked. Her nipples are like fat, pink gumdrops and I want them in my mouth. We need a place to go, but her house is an hour away; we're debating a cheap motel, lamenting that her car's too damned small, way to damned small.

We agree on some destination. And then, oddly realistic, for my dreams - we stop to buy condoms.

I woke here - as usual, arousal ripping me out of the dream before I can near any consummation. But i was struck, as I lay half-awake - by the unusually narrative quality of the dream. I have such dreams rarely, though at least a few of my best erotic stories are inspired by such dreams. But also, I was struck by the reality of it. My subconscious had placed me in an entirely hypothetical, and yet absolutely true-to-life situation in the scuba-related training class; the stumbling awkwardness I am prone to when flirting with a particularly pretty girl is, while not universal for me, frustratingly real. And the fact that my sub-conscious said condoms is unprecedented. I've never in my life inserted condoms in a sex dream.

I wish I'd woken enough to write it down at two am. The dream was so richly detailed, and so emotionally vivid. What I've reconstructed here is a shadow of the dream I woke from. But it will have to do.