I had a lovely commute this morning. I know that's a weird thing to say. But I got in my car, which didn't have snow or frost on it, and drove down nice little back streets in North Buffalo, some with beautifully-tended gardens and some with rusty K-mart shopping carts poking out of the long grass, and got onto the 198 and drove past the park and the art gallery and the big beautiful church towers on Grant St., and went around the curve onto the 190 and there was the vista of the river on one side, the drawbridge and the Peace Bridge up behind it a black latticework of iron arches decorated here and there with idling trucks, and came around the bend to see downtown spread out to my left, skyscrapers with antique buildings nestled among the concrete, and then I was into the First Ward with the hulking old warehouses and brick factory buildings, until I reached my exit and drove over the railway overpass and a tangle of ductwork, a neatly-groomed lawn and pretty garden on one side and a chain-link fence with weeds growing through it on the other, and up to the huge brick behemoth of the factory where I work, sturdy and weatherbeaten.
I had good music on the iPod, and it just felt like it was the opening credits of a movie. The sky was dark and dramatic, light from the sunrise coming through banks of dark clouds in black and gray lined here and there with a strong pale silver light. I saw both a pickup truck with a plow on it and a bicyclist riding to work, at the same time; the leaves are changing but the grass is bright green and flowers are still blooming. It was a very Buffalo scene.

This is a test of the upload ability.
Also it's an excuse to post the photo (e:zobar) just sent me.



He captioned it:
"self-explanatory and inexplicable all rolled into one"

It's a styrofoam coffee cup bandito and when I asked him what a styrofoam coffee cup bandito was, he sent me that photo.

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.