Two conversations.

This weekend I had two conversations that, together, intrigued me to no end. The first was from an acquaintance I'd made recently who, after knowing me for six months through another friend, finally came up and said, "You know, ten years ago when I read your stuff I realized that I didn't have to live a normal life."

I was a bit stunned. I never know what to say about such things; I live in this dichotomous world where on the one hand I believe that saying what you mean and not being withdrawn or ashamed of who you are is the kind of thing that changes the world; on the other hand I remain a little shocked that people seem to believe I'm one of the people saying those kinds of world-changing stuffs. I thanked her, and blushed a bit, and really wished I knew more about how to handle those circumstances.

The other came from an old reader who wrote that she was "unfriending" my blog because she was hoping for things like The Journal Entries and, instead, found that I'd given up my exciting, kinky, heroic existence for endless days of wiping my kids' noses and driving them to school.

Hey, having kids is pretty damned heroic. It's taking responsibility for not just your own life, but the life of another. it's having faith in a future that'll be better or just as good as the past. It is commitment. And it's an adventure, a twisty maze of passages, all different, as they get older and more complicated and more human.

"It's like if Spiderman took off the costume, got a nine-to-five job, got old and fat and bald and eventually died, a burned-out bitter old man. I'd hate a story like that. It's depressing."

Clues in small doses: There is no Spiderman; there are only mere mortal human beings. Being "true to yourself" does not mean playing "fuck the system" every last day of your life. Finding your way through life, finding a way to feed yourself (not to mention a family!) and still be satisified with your day-to-day existence, that's tough work.

And here's the last clues: wannabe heroes suck. Real heroes may be crafted in a heartbeat by circumstance, but wannabe heroes get people killed. It is the desire for "a better world by hook or by crook" that creates monsters. The road to Hell and all that. The world is messier than a comic book.

Still, I'm having the best revenge. My life is both happier and calmer than hers.

Transgressive Pornography

So... the other day I was reading Fark, one of those consistently interesting collator blogs of news and miscellany, some interesting, much not. Fark is unashamedly lad-rag material, with ads in the sidebars for naked or semi-naked girls and links in the pages to more naked girls, along with photoshop contests that ridicule anything and everything. A recent fave was The Mac Cult.

But as I was perusing Fark, the left-bar ad (an animated GIF or Flash of some kind) blinked and the girls there was, well, just too damned young for my tastes. It was like having a sudden allergic reaction: "Where do all of these girls come from? Don't they have parents? What kind of incentive does it make a nineteen-year-old girl choose to be a "teenage anal princess", as the title of one movie I spotted on a virtual shelf recently promised (complete with "six way gangbangs and no condoms!"

Yeah, I'm one to complain. Before I had kids, that kind of porn was hot. Now I worry that my kids will be asked to make those kinds of choices.

So, looking for some other outlet for the "pressure on the brain, eyeballs turnin' white" feeling I stumbled upon something called Real Men Video. Forty-something men in mostly excellent shape doing wonderfully nasty things to other men. Bareback. And, yeah, I found that the most arousing aspect of all. It was transgressive without being illegal-- scratch that, it may have been depending upon where it was filmed-- and one can assume that, at the age these men obviously were, they were capable of making such decisions for themselves.

It wasn't the choice I'd've made myself. I have too much to do to play at such risks. But, sigh...

Bad Writing!

No, not mine.

I've recently been made aware of the trashy genius of Ray Kainen, whose works included A Sea of Thighs, Satyr Trek, The Spy Who Came and Came and Came, The Cosmic Gash, and worst of all, The Day The Universe Came.

You can probably guess from the cover alone why I'd like a copy of the last: ( Picture )

. They're damned hard to find, though.

Customer service pap

Robotic voice: "Good afternoon, sir. How may I provide you with excellent service?"

Okay, question of the day: when did this kind of ridiculous verbosity become normal? I mean, what's wrong with "How may I help you?" or "How may I be of service?"

The woman on the other end of the phone did her job with perfunctory professionalism, and I appreciated the way the call proceeded, despite the awkward opening, until we were done:

"Thank you sir. Did I provide you with excellent service?"

"Yes, fine. Thank you." I was tempted to make some sort of vague Bill & Ted gesture at the phone. "Be excellent to each other!"

I think I'm going to write these people (it was Bank of America, in case anyone's curious) and tell them that their "customer service script" is ridiculous, annoying, patronizing, incoherent, and unworthy of their fine institution.