From our motel room:



You always hope for good weather when you're shooting outside. Actually, you basically COUNT on having PERFECT weather. "Good" weather doesn't always cut it. Like today, when I wanted it to be gloomy, but not actually rain or snow. Instead it's sunny. Bright blue. Too loud.

Delia's getting ready for me to shoot her but the light is just not right at all.

I could have a spycam on me right now in our motel room while I blog this but I don't want to.



*****

Sometimes it makes me nervous when I communicate shoot ideas/plans to people because I'm afraid they'll get their hopes up for something really creative and amazing based on how much work and planning we seem to be putting in it. And of course it never winds up being THAT great / is still pretty generic. At best everything is still sort of a rough draft of a good idea. Shows potential. Meets or exceeds a sort of bland standard of certain amateur porn things. We'd have to shoot a lot less to do a lot better or have a lot more resources and people working for us or stay up all day and night. People sweetly encourage me, "just shoot less! Shoot what *you* want!" but I don't think you can make money that way. The better and higher quality your work is, the less there is of it and the easier it is for people to "steal" and pass around. Have you noticed that on the internet? The more beautiful something is, the more people feel they have a collective right to enjoy it for free and share it with each other. This is great! Everyone should know about it! It's an extremely flattering compliment that can wind up starving you to death.



I could pull out a lot of things we do and present them in a different way to make them seem better than they are, but I can't seem to find time for that. And again, I'm still proud of mediocrity and just having potential. It's a very good thing to make pictures that make people happy every week, are genuine, straightforward, show promise, suggest a certain mood. I think I'm good at that: being suggestive.

*****

I have a hard time accepting compliments that make our work seem better than it is. I also can't help feeling defensive towards people who think what we do is easy or that they have solutions to challenges I complain about, solutions they are sure would work and certain have never crossed my mind or been attempted or dismissed because they wouldn't work for a variety of reasons.

I remember standing outside our local movie theater listening to some blow-hards talking about what THEY would do if THEY owned the local theaters. Why don't they do X and Y? It would be simple . . . if I owned it, X would be the first thing I'd do. I hate those people even though I do exactly the same thing. Maybe that's why I hate those people; because I can't resist being a stupid know-it-all either, even when I know I don't. It's people's way of being part of the conversation when they really are in no position to comment at all. I just really hate being the subject of other people's imaginary business-plan hobby-thoughts myself, but I guess I encourage it to a certain extent. Love it up to a certain point. I want people to think of the growth of our business as a serial novel, something they want to keep reading about and hope will end well and spawn many sequels. I just don't want them to tell me how to write it. But with some people you can't have one without the other. I don't blame them since I can't resist doing the same thing sometimes. And some of them really mean well. They really do.

Have you ever thought about X? I would totally read that! I'm sure it would make you rich! You know, I saw you on cam for ten minutes last week and I really think what your problem is . . . Hey, I'll bet if you did more of Z a lot more people would jack off to you! Z is totally where it's at.

*****

Every time we go away from home to shoot I go through a little process. First I'm anxious that we'll forget to pack something, that things won't go as planned, that we won't get enough work done. Then I realize everything is going to be fine, and if it isn't, I might as well enjoy the time away as time off, well-deserved. Then I get a fresh perspective since I'm away from home/work and a million distractions and have a little flexibility to think clearly. About what I want. About what I REALLY WANT TO DO. If I could only do one thing.



I'm at the point where I know what that one thing is, even when I'm at home and not away. But I'm not at the point of wanting or being able to give all my other work up in favor of that one thing and don't know if I ever will be. I still cling to the notion that it might be possible to do it all. Or that I should do other things first in order to make doing the one thing easier, foremost and full-time, without having to give a fuck what anybody else thinks of it.



If I could be good at any one thing -- if I were to invest 10,000 hours of practice in attempting to master it -- I know exactly what the one thing would be. I used to think forty-five would be too old to start being good at something, but now I think it would be perfect. Even fifty would be fine. Which means I don't really need to start practicing right now to be completely satisfied with myself in fifteen years. I'm comforted by this thought.

Labels: accomplishments, anxiety, fans, goals, PHOTOS, webwhore insights, work

posted by Trixie at 2/12/2009 10:47:00 AM - 0 comments - links to this post

 
Just a quick entry to say we're busy getting ready to be gone for a few days trying to shoot something specific. Outside. And it's WINTER. But that's when it needs to be shot. Mostly we're just trying to get ready (much more complicated than you might imagine unless you've done our kind of work and the same way we do it) and it's been snowing (again).

I anticipate having cold fingers, legs, buttocks, etc. a lot on Thursday and Friday. And then we're going to celebrate a late Christmas/early Valentine's day/Friday the 13th dinner with my mom. I'm looking forward to it, but also dreading certain things and am practicing stress management techniques while I'm not actively working.

Yesterday we went shopping for additional costuming for aforementioned shoot and after hours of sifting through second-hand clothing my nasal passages, throat and head already felt invaded by that weird, unsettling thrift-store smell that makes you feel like you're coming down with some old-lady sickness. Then we went to the drugstore where a lady was coughing. AND COUGHING. And hacking.

I'm not the type who's EASILY grossed out by random germs, sneezing or coughing people in public, but my mucous membranes were already feeling vulnerable after searching through three thrift stores and this woman was really projecting her spittle. She made half-assed attempts to cover her mouth with her hand by holding it up six inches from her face and coughing TOWARDS it, not into it, and then she walked around briskly touching every single thing in the store with that hand. On top of that there's something unsettling about this woman; I've seen her around town before and she's like a fascinating fifty-seven year old dolly with long, youthful dark-blonde hair in waves worn in a loose asymmetrical ponytail. Her face is powdered porcelain with spots of rouge on her cheeks. Her lips and eyes are lined and her features are girlish except for the wrinkles around her mouth. Nothing about her says middle-aged, which is probably what she is; instead she's a duality of eleven-year old girl and seventy-nine year old woman. I'd totally follow her around the store to stare if she didn't give off such an aura of contagion.

When we got to the checkstand she got in line behind us and it suddenly started pouring down snow outside. The cashier kept interrupting our transaction to answer the phone and I felt totally hemmed in by winter, like she wasn't going to give up until she infected us with post-nasal slush.

Because I DO NOT want to get sick right when we've got time and money invested in shooting, I came home and started swilling down emergen-c until I was totally high (see this tweet followed by this). I rarely get colds (I think I've averaged maybe one cold or flu every other year, if that, in the past fifteen years) but I'm still paranoid enough to often feel like I'm coming down with one.

So. The goal today is to get a million things done, not get sick, stay calm, and leave as early as possible tomorrow so we can arrive at our destination safely while there's still daylight so we can plot our shooting locations for Thursday and Friday.

I won't be checking email while we're gone, we have webcam shows and chat scheduled when we get back (on Sunday and Monday), and I've only responded to maybe 3% of my email over the past year, so . . . yeah -- if you want to talk to me any time soon you'll probably need to be a member who shows up to one of those live cam events next week. Wish us a productive trip!

*****

Speaking of my limits, two seconds before I hit "publish" on this post, I got a comment on my last blog entry from a guy who has a problem. Here's the comment:

I hope someday that you will reply to my comments. Forever seeking your feedback, Furry Freak Bro, aka4JerryGarcia, Merry Pranksters, etc.

He might be a nice guy (if memory serves he acts normal during camshows), but he is one persistently demanding motherfucker who cannot take a hint. Facebook, twitter, email, blog comments -- they all say basically the same thing: Hi there - respond to me PLEASE; I await your response. Please write back to me. If you commented back it would make my day. Your fan, xoxo blah blah blah
WHAT. THE. FUCK!?!?!

First of all, you've said nothing to me that warrants a response. Second, if you're a fan of mine you'll see that I don't engage in a lot of idle chit-chat, particularly the hi/good morning/waving/hugging/emoticons variety and if you have any reading comprehension you can see that I'm KIND OF overwhelmed, constantly talk about not having the time or energy for email, trying to keep my hours at the computer limited to a healthy number and use that time productively, etc. How long would it take if I said "hi" or "good morning" or "YES! I fucking SEE you!!" to every single person I encountered online? I would have no fucking life and no time to respond to people who actually put a lot of thought and effort into writing to me.

So I blocked him on Twitter so I wouldn't be bombarded by his pleas for attention, but now he has the balls to make that comment on a blog entry that essentially says I've been feeling like shit and have barely had the energy to drag myself out of bed and now that I'm feeling better it will take awhile to catch up on everything. But listen; even if I were all caught up and had ample time on my hands, the last thing I would feel like doing is encouraging these incessant, self-absorbed, petulant guilt-trips seeking acknowledgment.

I really try to not be mean and to consider that even wonderful people have blind spots, bad habits, etc. Before I ream someone's ass I sometimes try to imagine the person might be borderline retarded or otherwise lack the skills or comprehension to function at a higher level; maybe all they know is that the internet is a friendly place where you can look at pretty girls and get them to say 'hi' to you. And seriously? There are a lot of pretty girls online who make that their sole job/function in life; collecting myspace friends, saying 'hi' and 'hugs' to everyone, making a name for themselves that way. BUT I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE GIRLS. Get it?

Honestly I try to just ignore this person and others like him (ex. No one's responded to my messages -- I guess no one loves me) because I don't have the time or mental capacity myself to discover a nice way to tell them to STOP ACTING LIKE CREEPY STALKERS (when they're not really even BEING particularly creepy or stalkerish, just obnoxious) and understand that from my perspective I just feel bombarded by people who want think they deserve to have me interrupt my life to instant message them. I don't care if it's only two letters. H. I. Obviously it won't stop there. Next it will be "what's up? Do you like me? How's the weather?"

You wanted my feedback? You've got it, fucker. Try to see things from other people's perspectives. I don't *expect* people to waste their personal time empathizing with me or reading my long-ass blog posts, but if you send me hundreds of messages asking ME to waste my time on YOU, especially by begging for warm fucking fuzzies in the comments on a post where I admitted I felt like I was losing my fucking mind, you've got another thing coming.

An appropriate comment from him would have been, "wow -- I'm so sorry I've been sending you guilt-riddled whiny-posts on virtually every social networking site where you appear asking you to respond to NOTHING when you obviously have a lot of other things going on. What was I thinking?" Or, "man, I know what mental illness is like because I am compelled to pester women online; now we finally have something in common we can talk about if you ever have time; 'til then I totally understand if you don't want respond to me. I mean, sheesh -- if you did that to everyone your whole twitter feed would be, @wanker hi!, @dipshit hi! @asshat I see you there, bugging me! Boy, that would be silly! I'm so sorry for thinking only of myself."

If you're a true fan of mine it should be obvious that my JOB is not to sit around sending individuals empty messages of bullshit for free to verify to you that you exist. Find another way to add meaning and affirmation to your life because your current method is insulting and dehumanizing; I'm not a fucking robot or video game where you press buttons on your keyboards and I do a little puppet dance or a doll with a string on her back that you pull to get her to say one of eight pre-determined messages. I like you! Thanks for being my fan! You're number one! Good morning, sunshine!

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarf!! Seriously, I do not want to insult everyone who sends me thoughtful messages, shares themselves with me, wants me to know they appreciate what I do, etc. What I'm complaining about is a very particular brand of bullshit that fuels the empty "interaction" passing for "socialization" online. It's gross. A total waste of time. Say hi once or twice to me this way if you want, but don't incessantly needle me to respond. I was going to say, "don't needle me to reciprocate" but if reciprocity is what you want, THIS IS IT. Complete and utter selfishness. My little wants and desires trumping yours. I would send virtually the same message every day: Send me ten dollars, please? Hi it's me, Trixie -- still awaiting your dollars. I found you again! When WILL you join my site? It's Friday. Write back with the dollars. Even five would be nice. Say good morning to a good girl with seven dollars? Hello. Do you get these? If so respond with fifteen dollars. Your friend online, needing your dollars. Actually, that would make a billion times better sense than what he's doing, but it would still be way too boring and time-consuming for me to enjoy. I don't want to do data entry, I want to do MY. WORK.

And tweet about picking my nose and pooping. These witticisms don't grow on trees, so don't interrupt me! I'm trying to fucking THINK.

Labels: fans, health, money, mundane, priorities, rants, sex work, sociopolitical commentary, wankers, web culture, work

posted by Trixie at 2/10/2009 10:37:00 AM - 12 comments - links to this post

 
Here's an email I got the other day from someone trying to decide whether or not to join my site:

Hey, sexy, I am thinking about joining your site. How many nice videos do you have in there? Do you do any fart video?

Out of all the emails I get that deserve responses, choosing to spend time replying to this one PROBABLY wasn't wise or fair, but I did write back to say this:

Hi there! I don't have any fart videos (well actually I have one, but it's such a small and insignificant fart, it barely warrants mentioning). What I do have are spycams upon which patient voyeurs with audio enabled can sometimes hear me farting or even see me lifting my cheek to do so. No guarantees of when or how often or that you would catch it, though.

I don't know how many videos I have at this point, and I'm not sure how many you would consider to be "nice" since that is a highly subjective term. Most people who join my site are into the whole "package" that I offer, both as a strange and wonderful human being AND as a porn site proprietress, and statistics barely enter into their decision of whether or not to join.

Good luck in making yours!

*Trixie*

It's not that I think his questions aren't legit, I'm just reluctant to hand out quantified guarantees of satisfaction to people who are reluctant to join without them since I doubt they will be happy with my site (especially in this case when I don't have content to make a die-hard fart fetishist happy, even though I probably have MORE to offer him than other non-fart-focused porn sites).

Mostly I answer emails like this one because it's so freeing to be flip, especially when the person expects me to do everything I can to convince him to buy and I'm just not going to. It's so much easier to communicate with people I *know* I can't make happy than it is to write back to the people who really want to hear from me and whose opinions I genuinely care about. I feel guilty for it, but there it is.

*****

I have a lot (even more than usual) of maintenance, (re)design, and promo work to do on a lot of our sites so that's where I'm focusing most of my computer time. We have an appointment with Delia's therapist on Tuesday to talk about coming out to her family about her transition so that will probably be our day off for the week since we have to traverse a few counties to get there/won't be home most of the day.

Next week we've rented a room to shoot fancier photo sets with hosiery, etc. than we've been doing lately. I'm excited because the walls are PURPLE! You have no idea how much of my webwhore happiness depends on shooting in colorful locations. In the first two weeks of August we'll need to focus on shooting a lot, too, so we won't be posting galleries shot in the same exact place for two months straight.

I have a couple of really exciting things to blog about but just wanted to post something quickly today to stay in touch and let you know where we're focusing. Twitter's been down a lot so I haven't been able to do it there reliably (and am worried Twitter's downtime is effecting the way our members see our members-only area since it won't load the rest of the page until it tries to load our tweets). I should redesign that, too, so twitter is the last thing to load, but it would so fuck up the balance. Sigh . . . I wish the twitter fuckers would monetize it already so they could afford to make it WORK.

Labels: anxiety, customer relations, fans, fetishes, porn consumers, therapy, webwhore insights, work

posted by Trixie at 7/20/2008 11:31:00 AM - 0 comments - links to this post

 
I almost decided to boycott American Idol last night. The only time I've been so disgusted with a television show that I refused to watch it was in response to the Wayne's World skit on Saturday Night Live when they made fun of Chelsea Clinton when she was just a tween.

I know my refusal to watch something on television doesn't lead to positive change, but I reached my boiling point last night with Idol's continued sickening encouragement to viewers to be crazy fucking stalkers when they not only aired that disgusting phone call from some insane woman asking David Cook for a date, but presented it in their typical irresponsible, cutesyfied manner. I cringed watching him forced into the position where he had to act gracious and then they told her to stay on the line so they could get her contact information and make it happen.

I despise the way they display hysterical young people in the audience holding up signs with marriage proposals. The way they forced little twink angel David Archuleta to have physical contact with some random girl in the audience. The way they broadcasted some grabby freak snatching Jason and KISSING him; I'm sorry, that's not funny or cute -- it's assault. Presenting it as something charming, desirable, laughable, and/or welcome is sickeningly irresponsible especially when you know you have an audience of deluded young people. No wonder you find horrible people writing shit like this:

The first question of the evening was for David Cook, who was oh-so-busy wearing a smug expression. The caller entreated Cook to take her on a date, and because he thinks he’s a huge rock star he didn’t ever actually agree. It’s the woman’s birthday, jerk! And to that lady - sweets, you can do better.

Yeah. You must really have an inflated sense of self to not want to go out with a total fucking stranger who's developed an insanely shameless crush on you. Don't you know you owe all the women in the world a date on their birthdays and if you deny them you must be a pompous shitstain? FYI: the first celebrity stalker was a young woman. Oh giggle, titter, hahaha. It's all very cute and harmless until someone gets shot in the chest.

I'm also always left freaked out by the coverage of celebrity stalker cases like the recent crimes against Uma Thurman; they always seem to treat it less-than seriously, like it's all just a gossipy fun little personal tidbit to shove in the entertainment section, not a real crime exposing a peculiarly modern outlet for sickness. We're taught that celebrities have forfeited their humanity, privacy and personal time for fame and money; THEY BELONG TO *US*! They owe us!! Who do they think they are to reject us? Some people might perceive media coverage of this shit as "objective", but given how UNobjective, how obviously biased they are, in covering other stories their lack of overt concern or judgment in discussing celebrity stalkers feels like a chilling omission. Celebrities are presented as products we're never encouraged to empathize with. One of the few times the public is encouraged to sympathize with the severely mentally ill is when they target celebrities for abuse. What do the stars expect? They *asked* for people to love them, hahaha! Adding insult to injury, the stalkers are practically rewarded by getting to enjoy courtroom meetings with their victims. How fucking nasty is that?

My angry reaction to Idol last night might have been partially fueled by this nugget of sickening anti-pornography legislation from some asswipe congressman claiming he's "committed to protecting the constitutional rights of every American":

. . . designed to stem the sale of pornography on military installations. Broun’s legislation, the “Military Honor and Decency Act,” closes a loophole in current law that is allowing the sale of sexually explicit material on American military installations located both within the United States and around the world . . . . “Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad. Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit".

Yeah, there's no greater way to honor a soldier than by telling him he's a sick dickless fuck who's too fucking stupid and morally retarded to decide for himself what kinds of pictures he's grown-up enough look at. And GOD FORBID those sleazy moguls should PROFIT from a war! How funny is that when both Playboy and Penthouse have been in dire financial straits for years while the defense contractors and other war profiteers make obscene amounts of money that make Hef's and Flynt's bank accounts look infinitesimally tiny.

I know these laws and regulations are nothing new and there've always been similar restrictions on the military, but lately they seem to be making it even worse, writing new laws against visiting sex workers in foreign countries, etc. It's so contemptibly insane the way these shitheels don't care about killing soldiers or making them kill others, but they're really concerned about how even the tamest jack-off fodder is going to destroy their vulnerable little minds.

My brain never stops being boggled by people defining for us what is decent and what is obscene who throw celebratory parades when real atrocities are committed. And the crazy contention that sex crimes and violence never happened before mass-distributed pornography came along? What the fuck ever. When are people going to see how irrational it is to make porn the scapegoat for men's dick-driven crimes? When are we going to be able to WEIGH indecency in a rational manner?

I feel safer knowing there are heaping loads of bukkake porn on the internet and more women every day getting paid to take gobs of cum on their eyeballs than I do in knowing that millions of children are watching American Idol which teaches them to be so distanced from reality that they could be personally rewarded for stalking someone they see on television. They're *both* dehumanizing but one is intended for ADULTS and features people who were PAID to get cum on their faces; the other is marketed to children and histrionic adolescents who are being enculturated that it's not only acceptable but DESIRABLE to selfishly and unrealistically harass, stalk, and violate anyone they want who's in the public eye.

These kids sign on to be singers and American Idol turns them into their unwitting whores, pimping them out to all the deranged fanatical, hormone-riddled viewers. Give the lady a kiss, David! Isn't that cute? Oh David, don't worry; we'll set up your Philadelphia date for you . . . we'll arrange *everything*! Is it in their contracts that they should expect to be physically mauled and publicly humiliated by total strangers? David Archuleta is underage, but it's okay for Fox to push him into the arms of "adoring" fans. God, can you imagine if it were Joe Francis instead of Ryan Seacrest doing that?

Labels: celebrity, fans, television, worse than porn

posted by Trixie at 5/08/2008 02:43:00 PM - 1 comments - links to this post