Friday, June 01, 2012

A Lovely Panoramic View Of The Catacombs of Paris


Catacombs of Paris in Paris

YNOT: Senate Credit Union Commits Breast Gaffe




As some of you might know - in addition to being the debonair, man-about-town, that I am - I'm also an Associate Editor for the adult entertainment site YNOT (who are wonderful folks, btw) - and here's a brand new one: a brief about a big boo-boo by the Senate Credit Union:


There are times when even the adult industry has to shake its collective head and wonder “What the hell were they thinking?” 
This week was one of those times: a credit union decided to test the boundaries of the old adage “sex sells” by employing suggestive imagery in an advertisement. 
And not just any credit union — the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union.
History abounds with examples of how bad an idea using human body parts to shill certain products can be. Witness a 15-year-old Brooke Shields cooing “Want to know what gets between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Or pick from a lengthy list of brouhahas that erupted over Abercrombie & Fitch’s ... well, everything. 
None of that stopped the Senate FCU from employing a female model’s notable assets as a come-on for loans. 
Kimberley Johnson at Addicting Info described the gaffe well: “The credit union recently sent out a mailer with a photo [PDF] of a woman’s torso with a special sparkle graphic directing your eyes to her buxom chest in case you were focusing on her white tank top or long, flowing blonde hair. On one side of the photo, it reads GOT BIG PLANS? Let us worry about the money … you’ve got a lot of living to do.” 
The flipside of the flyer urges members to “please borrow responsibly.”
Now don’t get us wrong: The flyer is attractive in a disembodied-boobs, impersonal sort of way. If it had been marketing Mel's Used Cars, a few eyebrows might have risen, but most folks would have given the mailer the attention it deserved (or didn’t). If the flyer had been distributed by a major national brand, millions of robotically created letters and phone calls of outrage no doubt would have followed. 
[MORE]

Thursday, May 31, 2012

YNOT: Shaking Up Video Consumers



As some of you might know - in addition to being the debonair, man-about-town, that I am - I'm also an Associate Editor for the adult entertainment site YNOT (who are wonderful folks, btw) - and here's a brand new one: a great interview with Bernhard G of Clipshaker and Shakecash:



People in the adult entertainment business have a tendency to dismiss so-called new technology as something they’ve seen before. Because the industry traditionally has been a proving ground for new ideas, much of what is touted as “new” has been seen before in one form or another. Sometimes products are just a little too far ahead of their time to gain traction, and at other times there’s no good reason to abandon an older product that continues to do its job admirably.

Bernhard G. hopes to avoid those pitfalls with Clipshaker. He calls the video player “a whole new way for adult entertainment consumers not just to access their favorite content, but also to organize it to their liking.” The product comes complete withan affiliate program: Shakecash.

We’ll let him tell you about it himself.

YNOT: Give us a quick history of your introduction to the crazy adult entertainment business.

Bernhard G.: Coming from the software business, I realized that watching adult movies could be improved. After research, I started this project, and that brought me to the industry.

YNOT: Give us a quick explanation of Clipshaker.

Clipshaker is a software application for Windows or Mac that helps users to organize their favorite scenes in their porn collection. The product was made to let users separate the best from the rest and let them manage the clips they own.

A user can take his video files, trim — or “clip” — them with three mouse clicks, and then associate tags or keywords with the clips he has created. He then can search for his clips and create playlists that contain clips. Think iTunes: All the clips in one playlist can be played one after another. Also, a user can play his clips or playlists in up to 16 players in parallel, like on a surveillance monitor.

It is our ultimate goal that our users only watch the stuff they like, in a very new way, in order to get the maximum level of satisfaction.

[MORE]

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

My Office (in a few years)


BDSM Book Reviews Interviews Me

Very nice!  The great folks at BDSM Book Reviews - who wrote very nicely about my gay erotic thriller Finger's Breadth recently - just posted an interview with little ol' me.  Here's a taste - for the rest just click here.





1. When you first started writing, did you have any idea you’d be writing BDSM/kinky books? Do you write in any other genre?Well, let’s see … my first published story was in the late-lamented magazine FutureSex, back in 1994. The story – “InterCore,” by the way, was then picked up for Best American Erotica (same year) and it all just kind of snowballed from there. While I’ve pretty much always wanted to be a writer it wasn’t until I stepped into the slippery, steamy, world of smut that I had any real success so – surprise – I’ve done most of my work there. But I also write non-fiction (including a book of my weird history pieces, Welcome to Weirdsville, which is coming out soon, and How To Write And Sell Erotica — my book on smut writing, and Pornotopia – which is non-fiction sex pieces); science fiction, fantasy, and horror (such as my collection, Love Without Gun Control); romance (see my novel Brushes), and lots of other stuff. 
Here’s a quickie bio: 
M. Christian is – among many things – an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many, many other anthologies, magazines, and sites. 
He is the editor of 25 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, Pirate Booty, My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi) and Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant) as well as many others. 
He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, Licks & Promises, Filthy, Love Without Gun Control, Rude Mechanicals, Coming Together Presents M. Christian, Pornotopia, How To Write And Sell Erotica; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, Fingers Breadth, and Painted Doll. His site is www.mchristian.com. 
In addition he is an Associate Editor for the adult industry web site YNOT, and is an Associate Publisher for Renaissance Books (which publishers groundbreaking BDSM as part of its Sizzler Imprint). 
2. Are you actively involved in BDSM? If so how do you identify yourself? Dom(me)/sub? Top/bottom? Switch? 
I’ve been in the scene since ’88 (1988, smartass) or so and while I seriously love the folks I’ve met there I’m actually more a sensualist than a hardcore player. One reason I love the scene is that the people I’ve met have all pretty much been in touch with their sexuality – a very refreshing thing compared to the ‘real’ world. If you want to look me up, by the way, I’m “MChristian” on Fetlife … and pretty much everywhere else. 
[MORE]

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Thanks, bro!

I really do have a very, very wonderful brother. Just check out this fantastic prezzie he gave me for my recent birthday: an amazing new Gakken model of a Theo Jansen strandbeest ... thanks, bro!

Here's a video of it stately strolling across a table