Enough is enough.

When I started this blog eight months ago I decided to use the pseudonym “Bacchus” in an effort to enjoy, while it lasts, the thin and temporary anonymity that pseudonymous blogging provides. But, for some reason I never quite managed to articulate to myself, from the beginning I referred to my Bacchus persona in the third person.

I’m going to keep the pseudonym for the nonce. But the third person business has got to go. It leads to excessive use of passive constructions and other perverted crimes against literacy. And, more importantly, it makes it bloody hard to express an unequivocal opinion.

I’ll see how it goes.

It’s tres chic to criticize pornography; probably every literate person does at some time or another, despite the shooting-fish-in-a-rainbarrel nature of the enterprise. But few manage to do it with such elan:

I find almost all porn to be insufferable. The inflated breasts, the blond hair, the absence of the merest trace of thespian ability. But the thing that repulses me most of all, is the stupidity. I’m not talking about the inane dialogue that is written to give porn films a plausible scenario. I’m talking about the insipid direction, lighting, cinematography. The men’s gym-tits and deli-window dicks. The women’s gonfle tits, cookie-cutter measurements, greasy sheen. Their interchangable clonedness. The repetitive and unimaginative scenes in which the same buttons get pushed over and over and over and over again. It’s like a printing press that prints out the same newspaper day after day, and we’re supposed to be interested.

Thanks to Madame G.

By the way, anybody know what “gonfle tits” are? It sounds like a dessert to Bacchus….

Here’s a cute image of abject slavery, as envisioned in the absinthe-soaked photography salons of turn-of-the-century Paris:

This image was snagged from a passing Ebay postcard auction, where it was going for a sum that should have been large enough to ensure that the models were included in the deal.

Yesterday the Reverse Cowgirl posted a link to an appeal from Fantagraphics Books, which is in a dangerous cash flow crunch that might alternatively be described as a “bulging warehouse” crunch. Book rich and cash poor — who among us can’t be sympathetic to that universal plight of the literate?

Anyway, this whole matter cut no onions with Bacchus, because he’s not generally a comic book guy and the Fantagraphics guys apparently are. And here’s the mind-boggling part — nowhere in their “buy our books!” appeal did they mention their ownership of the Eros Comix imprint, to whom we all owe thanks for the kinky insectile slitherings, moanings, and writhings of comics like Bondage Fairies, not to mention the wholesome spankings and 1950s June Cleaver dildo shenanigans of Housewives at Play. And too many other quality erotic titles to count.

This oversight on Fantagraphics’ part is possibly forgivable, as they’ve doubtless got good reasons for separating out their adult business and being low-profile about it. But it’s inexcusable for the Cowgirl not to have mentioned this trivial detail (unless, like Bacchus, she did not know it.)

Fortunately for all concerned, a mysterious stranger who calls himself Sam dropped an email. So now we know: Go buy some dirty comics today, if you want to be able to buy them tomorrow! It’s a good cause….

Here’s a hilarious pinup art essay by James Lileks, in which is lampooned an extensive series of paintings featuring girls whose panties have mysteriously fallen off in public. Celery is often present. It’s all very weird and a little disturbing, although some of the pictures are sort of cute if you are into public humiliation of pretty but hapless women with inexplicably slippery thighs:

It’s hard to say whether Lileks doesn’t get that this was a fetish of the artist, doesn’t approve of what is basically a harmless fetish expressed in art, or is just being so harsh for the (considerable) comic effect that results. A good read in any case.

Courtesy of Porn-Stash we have [had] a gallery purporting to be the Brazilian Women’s Soccer Team. Dunno if that’s true or not, but there is one hell of a lot of deliciously callipygian beauty on display. And the shower scenes (one of which is pictured here) have enough nubile soapy goodness to power a small country, not to mention make a grown-but-dateless man weep.

Exit weeping….

Similar Sex Blogging:

• Girl Washing
• How To Wash A Girl
• Six Dirty Girls

This is true:

Baycon is a very costume-based convention (or “cosplay” as the young, wide-eyed screaming anime fans are calling it). This means that everyone looks like a freak. Especially people like me, who don’t dress up. We look like the weirdest freaks ever. Even the hotel staff look like fairly normal freaks by comparison, because they’re dressed up in waiter and maid’s outfits.

And some people, look like incredible, dressed-like-Lara-Croft-only-with-chains-on semi-naked babelicious freaks. Not that I stare. Or even look, or think about them, or anything ever. I only know about their existence because when these people walk into a room, all the straight boys nearby give out this universal telepathic deflatory pained sigh. It’s like the sound of a wolf-whistle, only backwards, sucked in. Ooohhhhhh.

The sigh has a meaning. All my life, it says, I have been told by my superego that dressing like a Marvel superhero will not get me laid. And, here, here and now in this temporary saturnalia, surrounded by other males who are – at best – my equals in the ugly league division table: here is my perfect woman. But the world knows that this mad girl’s flickering eyes craves just one thing. A man dressed as Galactus, Eater of Worlds. And not only have I left my Galactus costume at home. I never made it. Worse, I threw those biro drawings of me in the Galactus helmet away the moment I’d drawn them, ashamed to show them even to (say) Dave. And now I know: I’m not a virgin because I’m a geek. I’m a virgin because I have pursued geekdom with a less than pure, directed gaze. I have faltered, and now I’m just another guy at Baycon. And some other guy in front of me will be Galahad with the Holy Grail because he spent two weeks measuring out huge papier-mache clamps to fit on the side of his head. And I did nothing but stare at my Lara Croft pull-out poster, in the belief that she was not real and that I could not ever meet her.

Pursue your enthusiasms. Because if you’re doing them right, you know exactly where they end.

Bacchus once went to Baycon, many years ago. Bacchus was a virgin at the time. Bacchus made this very noise. Repeatedly. It hurts a little bit when you make it, too.

Thanks to Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka (drat that missing Russian-English dictionary!) for the excellent advice and to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing for finding it.