I linked a coworker to a particularly nice photo of (e:matthew)'s on this site, and all of a sudden I'm like, Crap, what if he recognizes my username from my personal email address that I used to email him once?
Crap.
So hi, to my sort of boss, if you're reading this, and I swear, my older entries aren't interesting at all and do not contain possibly objectionable photos.

Actually I don't think I've blogged about my new job here at all. Now would be an absolutely genius time to start.

No, I'm not writing this at work!! I wrote this earlier and the server's timestamp is off!!

Oy. Oh well, I already sent him the link. We'll see how much of a detective my sales manager is. ;)

So Z upgraded me to Leopard...
...
I haven't noticed yet.
I feel very sad and ungrateful. There are all these things I was like oh yay i'll use that all the time...
I kind of, well, just haven't.

I am a wannabe computer geek but I don't have the attention span. Boo.


In other news I totally downloaded that update to the flash thingy thing mahoo and yet haven't actually installed it because I am so lazy. Boo!

Also I think I am getting sick. I don't want to get sick. Unless maybe I get sort of just sick enough to be able to stay home from work with a cup of hot chocolate, and play with the computer, and pet the kitty, and then I feel better by the evening and can do fun stuff. That would be OK.

God I'm such a goldbricker.

So I promised some of my collection of antique porn. I actually paid for a subscription to a site, a real porn site, made up entirely of vintage porn, and I have stolen most of these from that site. I justify my theft by the simple expedient that I doubt any of you were planning on signing up to this site but are more likely to because of my plug.
The site is called DeltaofVenus, deltaofvenus.com-- I'm not linking directly unless that autoformats into a link.

It's mostly images/videos of women, girl on girl, and straight sex, though in several of the films and a number of the photos, there's homosexual sex just thrown in there casually for good measure-- obviously the divide between straight and gay porn was narrower. Last week they uploaded a video that was of two chicks and a dude-- and the two chicks actually had more enthusiastic sex with each other than either of them did with the dude. (The film dates to the 1920s.

So obviously cultural norms were different. And a lot of the erotica was attempting to avoid censorship by categorizing itself as "references for painters"-- hence a lot of artistically-posed female nudes. On the whole the "tone" more often aspires to be higher, simply because any photographer had to have invested pretty significantly into the equipment-- but there isn't actually a whole lot of coyness. The fuck pictures are pretty straightforwardly shots of people fucking, etc. Some of the photos even look candid, which is amusing.
The standards of beauty are somewhat different, but one thing I have noticed: Nobody is fat. People are un-toned, sure; there's lots of pasty droopy flesh here and there. But the people are skinny. The obviously low-budget ones with amateurs mostly feature chicks with unexceptional, slender figures. It's only in the later sections of the archives that you start to see any kind of impressive breasts-- it's fair to guess that nobody working in porn before about 1935 had boobs over a C-cup.
People are bigger now. Taller, more muscled, and fatter.

I knew this already, and more than academically, because my parents are historical re-enactors. In his social group, my father was much sought-after for events because he has retained his 29-inch-waist, and so can fit into actual period garments. He is six feet tall and 140 pounds-- and so he can wear antique military uniforms.

But enough talking. This is enough text, I think, that nobody's going to get an eyeful of antique erotica that isn't prepared for it. ;)

The photos get more explicit as you scroll down. They're not chronological, but I bet you can tell which ones are later just by looking-- the hair, the undergarments, the setting, and most tellingly of all, the actual shape of the people.

Sure, she's untoned, but she's not fat.


She's pretending to be an artist's reference. Maybe she really was.


There's no nudity in this one, but it's more explicitly erotica than the one above.


I love this woman's expression.


Whoa! Boobs! This one is obviously the 60s.


I just love the posed coyness.


This one is modern enough to have color. Shocking!


This is totally just for painters to use to pose the female form. Actually this woman is hella toned-- and shaved! I don't know what year this one is.


Aaaand.... sex! I think this is meant to be a Parisian cafe. It actually might be-- France was a hotbed of the early porno industry.


Another amusing thing is how damned *early* many of today's porn cliches started. Here, it's the delivery boy. I've also seen a movie dated to the 30s of a dude boning the hot secretary. And there's a great one of "nurses gone wild" that's probably pre-1940.


Threesome!!! Mostly I just love the chick's stockings. OMG. It's not a sock fetish if I just want them for myself, is it?


There are several in this photo shoot and I just crack up-- they're all, OK, now it's time to assfuck the man! There's a lot of that. He's like, Uh, ok?


Yes. This is two chicks. You're not just mis-led by the low resolution. That is two chicks, one dressed unconvincingly as a man.


Sacrilicious! Lesbian crucifixion! But what's really great is the seated woman's expression.


This one is so totally candid. Also, is the standing woman pregnant? At least she looks amused. Also I love the stockings in this one too.


Fucking! Most awesomely, the man is wearing sock garters, while the woman has removed her garters and is letting her stockings roll down. THe porno cliche of leaving your shoes on was well in force by the time photography was perfected.

Elsewhere I mentioned looking at vintage porn and (e:vincent) was like, 'Uh, from the 70s?' and I realized I haven't blogged about it here. I am totally considering going into porn to support my novel-writing habit. I initially considered big-breast-fetish porn because well duh (there is a touching story about how I first became inspired to not be self conscious and defensive all the time about my boobs and to actually figure out what size bra I should really be wearing after I saw a bunch of softcore porn shots of a 34F chick and realized I was bigger than her and there she was making a living off her boobs, holy shit).
But then I was like, no man, no. I should do reproduction vintage erotica. That would be so rad.
I should probably address the whole burlesque-is-geek-erotica thing. There is this motion lately to reclaim the erotica of less-jaded (theoretically) historical periods, and it's more intellectual than sexual for many-- burlesque and pinups are the province of nerds, and are done not only for getting one's rocks off but also out of notions of feminism and identity etc.
So anyway.
Bandwagon-- am I on it? Hell, I AM it-- roller derby is another version of this, reclamation of former exploitation as new empowerment.
Anyway.
This is a somewhat ill-considered rant. So instead I am going to post some images that are vintage erotica. [...]

...

Yeah, I've restarted Firefox several times and I can't post anything, can't upload any media.

(e:paul), the Upload Media button, I can say pretty certainly, doesn't work in Firefox on the new release of Apple.

Someone had questions about roller derby and now I don't remember who it was:
If you are interested in skating with us, either to be a referee or to skate on a team, come to one of our practices. They are from 8:30-10:30 on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and 8:30-10:30 Sunday mornings. It is best, if you have any protective gear, to wear it-we have some we can loan out, but it may or may not fit you or be any good.
To skate with us in drills, we do ask that you wear kneepads, elbow pads, wrist guards, and a helmet. Some drills also require a mouthguard but you probably will want to just observe those for your first couple of practices.
"But I'm a good skater," you may say-"I don't need kneepads."
Yes you do-a lot of our drills involve falling deliberately, and our style of skating is predicated on frequent falls, deliberate or otherwise. Even our refs wear kneepads at least. You'll just be happier in protective gear.

Also we wear quad skates, not inlines; quads are required, and you can rent them, though you could probably use your own inlines for the first few practices to get a feel for whether you're interested in joining us more permanently.

Do people get hurt doing roller derby?
Bruises are frequent, usually arm bruises from blocking, and leg bruises from falling not-quite-properly. Collisions happen, though they're fairly rare and usually minor. Falls are frequent, but we practice falling to ensure that these are rarely painful.
More rarely we do have muscle pulls and sprains. In a year we have had probably 5 relatively serious knee injuries-two girls had pre-existing knee conditions that worsened from skating, and three girls tore their meniscus or ACL in falls while skating- of these three, one required surgery to fix it, because she KEPT SKATING after she was injured, and fell twice more. One girl fractured her leg very badly in a freak incident during practice last year. We also had several other somewhat-serious injuries-concussions, sprains, twists, cracked tailbones-but nothing that incapacitated anyone permanently. One girl broke a rib, but not so badly that she could not skate later that month. (In fact she didn't stop skating that night, and skated another bout the week after heavily bandaged, though that was largely because she's a total badass.)
My point? For the most part, it is reasonable to assume that you will be sore the morning after many practices. There is a risk of something worse, but it's uncommon. People get hurt worse playing hockey, more often-collisions in hockey are often head-on, while in roller derby everyone's moving the same direction.
So we do require that you have primary health insurance in order to join the league.

We have open recruitment until December. November 11th is our draft-we may not have another draft this year, so to get onto a team you'd have to have joined the league by then and pass your skills assessment. But we will have places for skaters who are not on a team, so it's not that we're turning anyone away.

And most importantly: ROLLER DERBY IS FUN. It is the most fun it is legal to have. Also it's an entirely volunteer-run organization, involved in the community, by and for women. It's a great networking opportunity and also is way cool. At my tenth high school reunion no one cared about my crappy job and unimpressive life-they just all thought it was so cool that I skated on a roller derby league.

Oh-(e:Vincent) was asking about my wristguards:

I'll blog about the party later, I just wanted to write that up while I was still thinking of it. My obligatory roller derby pitch!!