No, it's not an invitation. ;)

The local paper carries Savage Love, a sex advice column written by Dan Savage. There's probably quite a few other papers that carry it as well, but for those unfamiliar with it.

Today there was a letter from DRAGON expressing his concern for being a straight guy into scaly male on male pr0n. Dan, in my most humble of opinions, took it in stride and ran with it using his own biting sense of humor. Despite the ample temptations, that always seem to follow anything with a whiff of Furrydom to them, to belittle or berate the individual, I thought he was fairly evenhanded in his advice. Knowing this will show up eventually in fandom circles, I thought I'd give it a shot and see if anyone else had a differing opinion, was in agreement or thought there was more that should have been addressed.

I'm interested to hear anything people have to say about it.

Here's a link http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove for anyone wanting to see the letter.

Talk amongst yaselves.

I haven't touched this in a month and hardly anyone reads it but I'm kinda in a writing mood again after quite a bit of weird time.

Got sick, got better, got sick, got better and finally settled back into my normal rut. Yes, it's a rut but it's mine dammit and it's not so bad. I'm glad to simply be comfortable in my own skin again and not feeling like I'm older than I really am.

So many things I want to get done that I have the time for but rarely the motivation. Working a day job seems to suck the gumption out of me in a way that soul crushing boredom seems to still be incapable of.

Hoping to get a full body cast of myself for suiting purposes. Still trying to figure out how to cast a good tail out of silicone rubber for ... costuming purposes. Writing when I get the mind to. Bemoaning my lack of notoriety. Wandering past other FA pages with notoriety and realizing that sometimes a little anonymity is not a bad thing. Waffling between being smut-free or smutty. Big ponderous questions and all that rubbish.

Anything interesting going on with you all?

So it's come to my attention that I've been way too somber and introspective in this journal.

By coming to my attention, I mean I think I've been pontificating too much. So here's a little something I ran across on the net. Join in if you know the song!

There are times when we are sorry,
For all that we have done.
Times when we are angry,
At you and everyone.
Times when existential angst,
Rears it's ugly head.
And times when we just simply wish,
That everyone was dead.

When such feelings overwhelm your soul,
And bring your darkest days,
Remember this, my dearest friends,
Joy comes in other ways.
Release from hate is right at hand,
With closed or open palm,
Just grasp it tight, with all your might,
And apply your favorite balm...

Oh...
Just...

Wank away your worries.
Caress away your cares.
Do it where you want to,
Be it up or down the stairs.
Stroke away your sorrow.
Pound away your pain.
Wank away your worries,
and you'll soon be right as rain!

But think not that I exclude,
Those of the fairer sex.
I do not seek to set apart,
To anger, harm or vex.
I simply have no term with which,
To emphasize the deed.
So euphemise most eagerly,
A verse to your own need.

But join us in our revelry,
And partake of carnal joy,
From coast to coast, near and far,
With every girl and boy.
So rejoice in this accomplishment,
Of all our monkey skills,
A secret font of dirty bliss,
And endless tawdry thrills.

Oh...
Just...

Wank away your worries.
Caress away your cares.
Do it where you want to,
Be it up or down the stairs.
Stroke away your sorrow.
Pound away your pain.
Wank away your worries,
and you'll soon be right as rain!

Soon... Be... Right...As...RAIN!

Soon be right as rain!

I want to draw.

I know, how many times do you hear THAT in a day?

In my case, it's just difficult to convey all my ideas through words. Partly because, and I'll be honest here, reading takes time and imagination. Not so say people don't have either, just that it demands greater attention. It's not as kind to the casual observer.

I want people to read my stories. To tell me if they liked or disliked them. To say how it made them feel happy or sad or horny. Heck that's why I'm here, as I'm sure many people are, because the creative world needs an audience... but people are hesitant to say anything. I find it hard to blame them. When all you've got are stories, it's harder to give people a first impression, good or bad.

With some visual work, perhaps, I feel as though I can catch an eye or two. Even in life we react to the red of a stop sign before we read the words. For me it's tough to be restricted, though to again be honest as that's what these are here for in part it's largely my own damn fault for not investing the effort, to a single medium. So I use the words I've got to, well, complain a little about myself and then get back to my writing.

***

Still working on the second part of my latest story. It's a little more complex than the casual ones I've been throwing out. I'm also glad to hear of any typoes, errors or plot holes you can drive a Macro through that anyone may run across in my submissions.

Thanks for reading. I do appreciate it. :)

I've got two more stories I want to write.

Two more stories and the rewriting on my novel.

And possibly more stuff. Probably more stuff. DEFINATELY more stuff.

Instead, I'm sitting here writing this for the moment because I need to do something and staring at a much smaller white screen is somewhat less intimidating than a big white screen.

It's strange, for me, to be taking all this so seriously. As far as this site goes, it's the closest thing I've had to a webpage in a very long time. I find myself checking it for tweaks and fixes, trying to set deadlines for stories to get them up. I'm probably getting a little too obsessive about it but it feels like an investment and not just like throwing a few things on the net and letting them drift off into the ether.

I've never had a LiveJournal or a MySpace page. Heck, the one time I signed up for a Furnation account I designed an entire look that I was thrilled with and promptly let it sit fallow. I haven't touched it in years but I keep all the kooky imagemaps and bits that I so meticulously designed in Paint Shop Pro (back when it was still mostly free) squirreled away in a folder on my hard drive.

Now I'm using Open Office and, when the visually artistic side of me hits, Gimp. I've got tools that blow my roughly coded HTML in Notepad and rather pathetic attempts at transparent GIFs out of the water. I've got a computer with five times the processing power of the system I hunkered over to do all that work.

It's the feeling that everything changed around you, and even you shifted gears to some degree, but you still wound up in the same place. Hell, I swore I'd never blog because I simply don't have enough to say on a given subject to hold anyone's interest...

...but when you've got to write, you've got to write. Even if it is just in a tiny box on a distant website. So here I am, effectively talking to myself in front of other people. It's a strange feeling but it's somehow intoxicating. Kinda halfway between acting and improv except you don't get to see the audience. It leaves me feeling self-important for doing it in the first place and yet, curious as to what the people watching will think. Sort of letting you crawl around in my head so I get a glimpse of what's in yours.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe it's just a website where people doodle and post and doodle and post. For me, though, I felt a need to post something. To try and contribute. Now that I'm doing it, I find it hard to stop. Because it's not quite the dump of data that my website was, nor is it just a place to go sifting through. There's people here, doing what they enjoy and sharing it. I guess kindergarten stuck with me and that's why I felt I had to share something back. I've just got some catching up to do before it's completely equitable.

Well, I finally finished a resolution.

I'd been holding off doing much with the site 'cause of a number of reasons, mostly having to do with feeling a needed an avatar and making sure I had at least some work to post.

So this is me going live... a couple days after my first submission but hey.

Being that my artistic skills are still around the stick figure level, it'll probably just be stories for the most part. Can't swear to a schedule being the fickle arteest I am.

Or could be because I'm lazy. Either works.