Number 75

Not My Bag

Porn.

It's Friday. I've not enjoyed this last few days. It's been a bit fraught to be honest. Plus, because this latest chest infection's symptoms have been coming in waves, I'm still feeling, at times, like I'm a fraud. Once upon a time the way I've felt at times during this week wouldn't even have had me considering having time off work; but to be fair, when I went to the doctors on Monday, the last thing I expected was to be told I had a chest infection, again. What was even more strange was when I saw the doctor, he just signed me off for a week; no questions asked. He just said, go home, take it easy, let the antibiotics work, don't worry. Obviously when a doctor says don't worry, you treat it just the same as when one says 'this won't hurt'.

My experience of 'this won't hurt' was kind of polarised in 1987 when I had my tonsils out. Doctors saying 'this won't hurt' had always been regarded as one of the great lies of the 20th century (a bit like that old joke about not coming in your mouth...) So when I had my tonsils removed and the surgeon said 'this will hurt a bit' I knew that it wasn't going to hurt a bit at all, it was going to be Spanish Inquisition styled pain. It was. I was also one of the first people whose post-op treatment didn't involve ice cream. I was told to eat toast, gargle with shrapnel and stop whining like a girl.

What this has to do with porn I have no idea, but I'm sure I'll work in a feasible link before too long.

The thing is I can't help but worry, except not about my health (I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that not looking after myself has made my impending dotage an NHS burden), more about the fact this is the 3rd time I've been off for a week since I've been at the new job and every time has been for the same thing (and you would have thought it would have been my back if it was going to be anything). The thing is, I'm pretty ambivalent about it. While the government is bleating about taking more disabled people off of benefits and screwing the poor even more (because that's going to make so much difference to the National Debt), if I lost my job because of my health, I wouldn't feel that bad about it. I mean, it's my fault, but it isn't. You know? 

That said, even if the worst was to happen, the packing up smoking has been eventful. It was a bit boring for the first 7½ weeks, but then the chest infection reared its familiar head again and for the last two days I have been coughing up all that stuff that I really thought I would have coughed up by now. The word 'productive' is apt now; for the last 8 weeks there's been bugger all coughing apart from the dwindling remnants of a smoker's hack and I really thought there would be something to marvel at in the bottom of a handkerchief, so, because there is evidence there's a wee bit of feeling like I'm really here for a reason. The last 36 hours have seen me go through the usual dance of not quite believing that so much shit could possibly be sitting on my chest and/or thinking that there's some kind of phlegm generator next to my lungs, pumping stuff out like a demented snow-making machine.

And then I saw the bin overflowing with tissues; full of sticky stuff...

Hold that thought, I know it's potentially decidedly unpleasant, but it's essential because I'm going off in a different direction...

As my constant reader is aware, I have been flirting with Tumblr and mucking about with my blog(s). Since joining Tumblr I have been pretty amazed at the diversity of stuff that exists on there. It is eye-opening even for someone who thinks he's seen everything the Internet can offer; but I forget that person existed in 1999, not 2012. When I was Comics International's Internet go-get guy, I spent a lot of time on it, in the name of research and figured I was experienced. I might have been, but that was over a decade ago and things really have advanced and they've done it with me taking whatever I use for granted.

One area of the Internet that has never appealed to me is porn. Honestly. I had my flirtations with porn magazines when I was a teenager, but by the time the Internet came along I had pretty much done everything I'd ever wanted, was married with all the benefits and being quite a right-on person I found porn a bit degrading, even if the person indulging in it was a willing participant and believed she was doing her own bit for her own interpretation of women's liberation.

I proudly tell people that they can go through my house with a fine tooth comb and the closest thing they would find to porn is the Wicked Weasel swimsuit website bookmark on my PC. They would find no magazines, comics, videos, DVDs, books or images of any kind that could be construed as erotic let alone pornographic. I'm proud of that fact and I don't feel like a Victorian one bit. Except, that isn't strictly true, not as of October 2012 and in a Pete Townsend kind of way I've sort of only made things worse...

Tumblr, remember I mentioned it? Well, I've subscribed to about 6 pages that don't belong to friends of mine and some of these have rather rude images on them from time to time and these would, ahem, pop up in my Tumblr dashboard and I'd be like 'what?' Seriously; despite a wonderful appreciation of the naked female body, sometimes having a beaver shot staring at you is a little off putting. 

Now, the wife has shown a strangely odd interest in the Dogcalypse blog I started, which basically shows pics of every dog I've ever owned (and a few more), therefore, because she's promoting it, she wants to see it. I'm not going to go into huge detail, but essentially she walks into the office asks about what dog pic I've put up and I go to Tumblr, to my dashboard and what is staring us both in the face? A woman, with no clothes on, in a provocative pose. There is a bin full of tissues...

Obviously, if I were a teenager I'd have died of embarrassment by now; but I'm not and I would have been prepared to dissect one of the offending tissues, in front of the wife, to prove that is doesn't contain a teaspoon of my sterilised jizzum, but a far more nauseous and noxious substance. However, this peaked my interest. I haven't been to a porn site in years, possibly as many as 20. I have, occasionally, been redirected to a porn site because I've clicked on the wrong link, but I haven't actually gone in search of any. Until the other day...

On Tumblr, there are so many pages that are choc-a-block full of porn that you wonder what on earth a porn site can get in this odd Internet world of free against pay. If you go to any of the porn sites where you have to pay you get a dazzling (or possibly vajazzling) array of porn, most of which features dodgy looking women, like the Wank Woman from over the road; men with unfeasibly large schlongs or some dodgy bint who probably gives £2 blow jobs behind Pizza Hut on a Saturday night. If you want to see a man with a big willy banging some ugly bint like he's grinding some meat for sausages, then porn sites are right up your street - there is absolutely nothing aesthetically pleasing about any of the three I allowed Google to take me to. There is nothing on these sites that would interest me, not even a casual nod, let alone an erection. However, go to 100,000 blogs which all have erotic or pretty much honest to God porn and you'll see things that will positively make your hair curl (or stand on end, depending on exactly where you want this to go...)

It's like The Times charges subscribers to read their pages, but all of the people that do could get any of the news from anywhere else. There are even a few websites that reproduce The Times paid for content for free, if you want to look hard enough. It makes me wonder how porn sites actually make any money, especially as nothing they offer is 'worse' than stuff you can find for free. But, the old prude in me can't understand why even the most frustrated of wannabe wankers would want to fork over money for anything these sites offer. The logical alternatives would be: get a girlfriend/boyfriend, find some of these unbelievably rude blogs or download porn from a torrent site for free - two are more obtainable than the other, but the outcome (ahem) will be the same... 

Other stuff at the weekend!