Thanks is due to Fleshbot for attracting my attention to some old news about Kink.com. I’m talking about this article in the New York Times, which, except for one token sentence filled with gratuitous slams (“wince-inducing grisliness”, “morbidly eccentric”), is a perfectly normal and quite interesting business profile of one of my favorite porn companies.

Having commented repeatedly on the pleasure and the significance of Kink.com’s smiling models, I particularly enjoyed reading this passage, in which we learn that running a photoshoot that leaves the models smiling, and then making sure to catch them doing it, is indeed the explicit company policy:

[Kink.com’s Peter Acworth] describes the company as having a certain social mission. Too often, he told me, B.D.S.M. is conflated with rape or abuse. He realized early on that building a respectable company devoted to the fetish could help “demystify” it. People who felt conflicted about their kinkiness, as he once had, “would realize they’re not alone and, in fact, that there’s a big world of people that are into this stuff and that it can be done in a safe and respectful way. Loving partners can do this to each other.” Kink’s required pre- and post-scene interviews, like the one I watched Wild Bill and Adams tape, for example, are meant to break the fourth wall, assuring audiences that, as in real-life B.D.S.M. play, everything is negotiated in advance and rooted in a certain etiquette and trust – that everyone is friends. The company actually requires that each model be shown smiling during the segments.

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Mostly passed it, anyway. J and I went with two other couples on a long camping trip, everybody being an experienced camper but me. We did some hiking, we did some biking, we did some canoeing and fishing…..and J and me did lots of outdoor sex, including once in the canoe that almost ended up with us in the lake. I think J’s two buddies weren’t getting as much, or they were bummed that he wasn’t as interested in fishing with them as he used to be.

But I finally got the stodgy Lutherans to laugh. When we were packing up to head back to civilization, J asked me to take down the tent. I did okay until I got to the part where I was supposed to stuff it back in that little bag, I just couldn’t get it in there. He saw me struggling and laughed…..and I said, louder than I meant to, “You should do this part! You’re the expert at getting big things into tight places!” His buddies laughed and laughed…..their wives weren’t amused. I guess I’m too different from the ex-wife to fit into the group…..

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After some eroticized gardening, Farm Wife Amber moves on to sassing her husband:

And did I mention that beer bottle shoved up my cunt? My husband has this habit of leaving empty beer bottles in his office, and I get mad every single time. One time I emptied one onto his head, even.

When I complained about it one more time last night, he said he leaves them out for me to masturbate with. “Oh yeah?” I said provocatively, dropping my pants and underwear, spreading myself in a chair, and demonstrating exactly what he had described.

I don’t think he’d ever seen a beer bottle so crudely misappropriated, and he was quite fascinated. Sassy, you think?

Explanation for those who might need it:

By now you’ve probably met ceiling cat and his many, many friends. (No? It might be time to get up to speed.) And the web is all a-twitter about Google’s new “street view” camera that brings the Google Maps “Zoom” feature right down to street level and sometimes even in through your windows. So it was only a matter of time before the ur-lolcat got replaced by a LOLbot.

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Pardons for the purely administrative prattle with no sex, but what do folks think of the new “Similar Sex Blogging” links appearing after certain posts? I’m doing them with a WordPress plug-in called Terong’s Related Posts, which makes it quick and easy to add links to posts from the archives. I saw it being done by some of the blogs in my blogroll and thought it was a neat idea — a sort of low-impact way to entice people back into the ever-growing and mostly-unread archives.

To cure the “no sex” boredom of this post, I’ll use the plugin to link to a few older favorites of mine.

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Sneaking into the girls’ locker room for a peek or a picture — I doubt there’s a guy alive who hasn’t mused a bit over the possibilities. Obviously this is not a new idea:

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I’ve been saying for years that blogging services suck. I said it in 2004 when LiveJournal destroyed a vintage erotica journal that I liked. I said it again in 2006, when, you guessed it, LiveJournal started threatening to suspend users for posting pictures of nipples.

Well, I’m saying it again.

Of course it will come as no surprise that I’m saying it — again — because our old friend LiveJournal (that outfit makes a wonderful bad example!) deleted a bunch of journals for posting dirty stories that management didn’t like.

“Our decision here was … based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what’s not. We have an awful broad range of discussions and topics and other things going on in LiveJournal, and we encourage other broad-ranging conversations on all sorts of topics. This was a specific case where we felt there was not a reason (for these journals to stay online).”

This is not a censorship issue (it’s their sandbox and their rules). This is not a rights issue. This is a no-brainer “poor stupid fuckers spent years of their lives writing their shit on a blog service that could, and did, turn them off and delete all their posts” issue.

“We felt there was not a reason for these journals to stay online.”

Why in the name of Odin’s enormous penis would you put your creative efforts at the mercy of someone who had the power to say that, and make it stick?

Dude, don’t do that. It hurts.

And it hurts to watch.

I’m telling you for the third time:

Anything worth doing on the internet is worth doing at your own domain that you control.

Aw, hell, I’m going to say it again for the kids on the short bus:

Anything worth doing on the internet is worth doing at your own domain that you control.

And this is for my slowest reader, the guy who is sounding out the words with his finger touching the computer screen, which he can’t see very well because of all the pizza sauce and popcorn butter that gets on there when he does that:

Anything worth doing on the internet is worth doing at your own domain that you control.

Are we clear?

Also, let me be clear: Livejournal is just the bad example here, not an especially bad service. All blogging services have the power to screw you over. The potential screwage is inherent in the nature of what they do.

Use your own domain. (Your registrar won’t care what you write.) Buy your own hosting. (Your host won’t care unless you post something that’s actually illegal.) Own your own shit. Don’t put yourself in the position to be messed with by somebody who can say “we felt there was not a reason” for your blog to be online.

There are other good reasons to own your own shit. We live in the era of the global microbrand. If you do anything creative, your brand identity is tied to your domain, the place where you publish all your creative stuff.

What? You don’t have a domain? You’re still putting all your shit up on a domain somebody else owns? You’re using your stuff to help them build their brand? WTF, HAVE YOU NOT BEEN LISTENING TO ME?

OK, I’m done ranting for comic effect. But I’m not kidding about this stuff. Blogging services still suck. Get your own domain. Control your own shit. Build your own brand, for you. And own it. For you.

You’ll thank me later.

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